Tue, Nov-03-09, 12:31
|
 |
|
|
Plan: LC Maintenance
Stats: 215/147/150
BF:
Progress: 105%
Location: UK
|
|
No room for obesity complacency
Quote:
From The Guardian
London, UK
3 November, 2009
No room for obesity complacency
'Good' headlines about revised projections mustn't distract us from the work that needs to be done to tackle childhood obesity
Neville Rigby
On the face of it, the latest forecast that there may well be fewer overweight and obese children in 10 years' time than was previously predicted would seem to be good news.
If the calculations are correct, it is suggested that "only" about 30% of youngsters will be overweight or obese – and remarkably the government's revised target of reducing the scale of the problem to year 2000 levels by 2020 might well be achieved. That assumes no improvement in the situation over the next decade and still leaves obesity among young children at twice the level it was in 1990 – the baseline for all the calculations.
What is extremely worrying is to note how easily the projections from the National Heart Forum can be misinterpreted as evidence that the obesity rates are falling – ergo, problem solved. The rise in obesity rates may be lessening, but obesity itself is now consolidating as a hardcore problem. The last Department of Health data showed excess weight and obesity among the two to 15 age group was 30%. Across Europe, the latest available surveys suggest that, in some countries, the prevalence is levelling off. But this "saturation" effect where obesity peaks and remains on a new high plateau means most worryingly that childhood obesity – at whatever level – is here to stay.
The Oxford modelling team that came up with the forecast is led by the National Heart Forum's chair, Prof Klim McPherson, the lead statistician responsible for the original predictions in the government's Foresight report. His team crunched the latest numbers for children aged two to 11 and for the older age range of 12 to 19 (odd since the Department of Health published data for children runs up to age 15 and official adult data start at age 16). What they suggest is that the post-2000 data indicates a quite different trend to the earlier forecasts drawn from 1993 onwards in the Foresight report. But what the media, politicians and even experts eager to clutch at this straw don't emphasise is the small print. The predictions come with a health warning, and the terms and conditions of the forecast are liberally sprinkled with caveats, qualifications and references to the exceptions of data which buck the trend in isolated years.
Comforting forecasts do not allow us the luxury of relaxing efforts to counteract childhood excess weight and obesity. We have yet to scale up from the "toe in the water" approach of pilot projects to a wide-scale approach to tackling the problem. We need give far more professional support to obese children and their families throughout the country in properly managed interventions, such as the Mend programme, which has delivered remarkable results so far. At the same time, we must fine-tune the mass-communication programmes that rely on the questionable notion that most of us respond sensibly to simple health messages.
The National Health Forum analysis does at least provide a useful signpost for the direction of future changes. Little credit can be attributed to the changes made so far, which came too late to affect the data under analysis. (The full Ofcom restrictions on televised marketing to children, for example, only came into force in January this year). But the shifting forecast should at least provide encouragement to consider whether bolder actions could have an even greater impact on the problem.
What should be clear is that changing trends can be correlated to some extent with the consequences of previous socioeconomic policies. The original rise of obesity in the 80s and 90s corresponded with an era of "rolling back the frontiers of the state" and free-marketeers, who enjoyed a free-for-all to promulgate a self-indulgent culture hardly shared by everyone. It is perhaps no coincidence that the highest rates of obesity in the UK are found in the areas where traditional industries collapsed during that period, and impoverished communities were driven to cheaper foods in times of recession.
The generation born then is already on the way to being the parents of today, but they too face a new era if not quite of austerity, then of the economist's "rational choice" of consuming cheaper foods. The latest recession may well change the trend's direction again and not for the better.
|
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...ity-projections |
Linear Mode
