Getting to the roots of obesity
CHILDHOOD obesity is a growing, depressing and dangerous problem laying the foundations for even greater public health and social crises in the future.
The number of obese children in Leeds has rocketed to 22,500. It's an epidemic which is worsening year on year, affecting children as young as five, who are classed as obese when they are twice their normal, healthy body weight.
It will surprise no one that junk food, a lack of exercise and too much time spent in front of the television and computer are blamed, as well as poor diets served up at home.
It will surprise no one either that public health specialists have responded to what is close to crisis with a plan to halt the increase in obesity in children under 10 by encouraging physical exercise at school and at home and educating children and their parents on healthy eating disciplines with rejection of fast food, sweets, fizzy drinks, crisps and fatty snacks.
It's not rocket science – and never was. Eating healthily and taking regular exercise always did produce healthy bodies and alert minds. That much has long been understood and is still – even by parents now accused, to some extent at least, of directing their children into heart problems, diabetes, depression and cancer in later life.
But it will take more than lecturing or shaming families into healthier habits to make a difference to what is described by the director of public health for Leeds North West as "a timebomb waiting to explode."
Obesity is one of the health problems most closely linked with social division and deprivation, the class culture we prefer to deny in the UK and poverty – not only in terms of income but also self-esteem and aspiration.
Any who has shopped for food knows the cost of fresh and healthy ingredients needed for a family's weekly diet of good, low-fat proteins, fruit, vegetables and dairies can be prohibitive. By comparison processed foods, laden with fat, sugar and salt – and all those items hard-pressed parents are warned against – are cheap, aggressively marketed and accessible by the low-incomed and time-poor.
Obesity in children and adults is a symptom of a national social crisis, not the root of one. Of course the symptom must be addressed with urgency to save lives and enhance the health prospects of future generations.
But unless the root and branch causes of social and health division are also tackled, another symptom will quickly fill the void, if and when this particular nut has been cracked.
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