Call for early action to tackle 'alarming' rise in child obesity

CHILDHOOD obesity has risen to “alarming” levels, academics have said as they called for action to prevent unhealthy lifestyles setting in among babies and toddlers.

- ELLA PICKOVER

Experts said that a child’s trajectories are set early in life and “appear difficult to alter after the age of about five years”.

They said that the first 1,000 days of life - from pregnancy through to a child’s second birthday - are “critical to development and health across the life-course” as they called for early action to prevent obesity in children.

These interventions could include: helping women to begin pregnancy at a healthy weight; encouraging breast-feeding, which is linked with a reduced risk of childhood obesity and avoiding “rapid catch-up growth” in low birth-weight babies.

“The overall goal should be to establish and maintain a healthy body-weight trajectory that avoids excess gain early in life,” experts from the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Italian National Academy of Sciences said.

In the UK, 1.3 million children are obese and a further 2.3 million are overweight, the authors said.