One in five of Tayside”s children are obese by the time they start primary school, according to the region”s childhood obesity lead.
Dieticians are working with youngsters aged two to 15, in an effort to defuse this ticking health time bomb.
The Paediatric Obesity Service Tayside (POST) is funded by the Scottish Government and has had 150 referrals since the project started a year ago.
The POST programme offers lifestyle education and aims to get children and young people to reduce the amount of time they sit in front of TV and computer screens, and ditch super-size snacks.
Referrals come from parents as well as professionals.
The project’s lead, dietician Dr Laura Stewart, said, “One in five children of primary one age in Tayside are what you would classify as being obese.
“There wasn’t an increase in the levels on the previous year and I would say that is nice and it is to be welcomed, but it still means we have to do more work.
“Obesity levels are higher than you would expect in Tayside and Scotland as a whole.
“The POST service only started clinical services in May so in that time we have had just over 150 children referred into the service, that is children in the upper end of the unhealthy age range.”
Dr Stewart said their strategies are decreasing the total energy intake, increasing the level of physical activity and trying to limit how long the child spends watching television or films, or playing on computers.
“There’s a lot of evidence to show that children who spend more time watching television or playing on the computer are more likely to put weight on,” she said.
“Sitting in front of a screen, you are being less physically active and there is also an association with snacking and you are often snacking without actually thinking about how much you are eating.
“We have two programmes and it’s very personal. We also talk through them with the whole family because the whole family needs to make the change.
Obesity increases the risk of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes which is normally a disease seen in later life in adults.
However, more and more children in their teens are presenting with type 2 diabetes as a consequence of being obese. There are also marked psychological effects leading to low self-esteem.
In the UK, around 27% of children are now overweight and research suggests the main problem is a continual reduction in the amount of exercise children take.
A child’s body mass index (BMI) is calculated using the same method as for adults weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared.
Dr David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, told The Courier the Tayside figures were “alarming but unfortunately not surprising.”
He said, “There is a UK backdrop of a slowing of the rise in childhood obesity rates according to latest figures but local data such as these remind us not to rest on our laurels, and continue to combat childhood obesity, which has a legacy of serious chronic disease such as diabetes and heart disease in later life.”
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user roberto la forgia.