Obesity is a crisis on the scale of climate change. Most adults in the UK are overweight and without concerted action we are condemning a generation of children to die before their parents, according to health experts.
The warning came at the launch of the Foresight Report - Tackling Obesities: Future Choices, which predicted that by 2050, 60 per cent of adult men, 50 per cent of adult women and 25 per cent of children could be obese.
'The chilling reality is that modern life makes us overweight,' health secretary Alan Johnson told the House of Commons when he introduced the report. 'In the past, tackling obesity has always been regarded as a matter of personal willpower but, as this report starkly demonstrates, people in the UK are not more gluttonous than previous generations and individual action alone will not be sufficient.'
Prehistoric man evolved the ability to store energy as fat to survive. Our hunter-gatherer biology means we are still programmed to eat as if we did not know where the next meal is coming from, but we now live in a country of energy-dense, cheap food, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work.
'Being overweight has become a normal condition, and Britain is becoming an obese society,' says the report led by Sir David King the Government's chief scientific adviser. 'But this transition has been at least three decades in the making.'
The study likened the obesity epidemic to climate change and forecast that it will be at least 30 years before reductions in the associated diseases are seen.
Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, says, 'Obesity is overtaking smoking as a health hazard. We are now in a situation where levels of childhood obesity will lead to the first cut in life expectancy for 200 years. These children are likely to die before their parents.'
DAILY LIVES
The report says, 'The prevalence of obesity raises fundamental questions about how we live our lives. A key challenge will be to reshape the environment in which individuals go about their daily lives, and transform the growing interest in maintaining good health into an achievable goal for all.'
'This Foresight Report recognises the complexity of the issue and that there is no single solution,' says Dr Waine. 'It was pointed out at our conference on the eve if its publication that, since the 1970s, report after report has gone to successive governments about the growing problems of obesity, but successive governments have not done a great deal about them.'
Mr Johnson is convening a cross-Government ministerial group to develop a strategy to respond to the report's proposals on issues ranging from ensuring that town planners incorporate healthy living into infrastructure to developing a programme of targeted public health interventions.
His pledge to focus on children prompted calls for work to target the early years sector, where there is the opportunity to shape habits for life.
'The report identifies the 12 stages in people's lives when they are most open to change,' says nutritionist Annie Seeley. 'Four are in the first five years of life and we need to capitalise on that.
'The food standards and regulations that have been put in place on the provision of food in primary schools need to be extended to nurseries. The under-fives is a key stage when we can influence dietary habits. There needs to be more guidance and regulation.'
'Children, as young as two, come in not having had breakfast, with crisps or a bag of sweets,' says Gerri Ross, head of the Old Moat Children's Centre in Withington, Manchester. 'We need a champion of food for the under-threes.'
Fiona Hamilton-Fairley, managing director of the Kids Cookery School in West London, says, 'We need cooking and healthy eating on the curriculum at nursery and school. I would start with children as young as three before the bad habits set in. It is very difficult to change teenagers' habits once they are addicted to fats, sugar and salt.
'As a nation, we have at least two generations of parents who can't cook because of the breakdown in family life and cooking was dropped at school so they never learned. It is not just about what you eat, but how you eat,' says Ms Ross. 'We converted a room into a dining room so lunch is a social occasion.
'The children sit in small family groups with their key workers and we set the table nicely. We introduce them to new foods, new fruits and vegetables and try foods from different cultures.
'Parents are involved in menu planning. We have a parent's cooking group. This is a social group led by a midwife and a volunteer from the National Childbirth Trust. It is an opportunity to talk about healthy eating. They choose a recipe, cook it and eat it.'
WARNING LETTERS
The Department of Health is planning to send warning letters to parents if their children are overweight when measured at the ages of five and ten.
Dr Waine wants to launch a national programme of annual checks on children's body mass index from the age of one to identify and target potential problems early. 'A message needs to be got across that there is no such thing as puppy fat. It is the beginning of obesity.'
The Government is increasing the numbers of hours of sport and physical education offered in schools, but Dr Jonathan Doherty, head of early childhood education at Leeds Metropolitan University, says it is important to distinguish between sport and exercise.
'Under-fives don't particularly like competitive sport. It is a turn-off for them. We need to provide developmentally appropriate play activities. It is about offering the types of activity that we know children love to do, such as the traditional playground games.
'The report shows that the responsibility for the crisis lies with the whole of society and not just with individuals. We all have a role to play in the solution. The way forward is maybe through encouraging families not just about healthy eating, but also about the benefits of exercise.'
'It is about physical activity,' says Gail Ryder Richardson, senior development officer (early years) at Learning Through Landscapes. 'It is about being energetic and there is also the element of encouraging the children to develop healthy eating habits through growing fruit and vegetables. I don't think any setting is so small that there is not space to grow food even if it is a container of strawberries.
'Early years practitioners need to feel confident and understand the importance of their role. If we don't take action we are condemning a generation of children to a premature and unnecessarily early end.'
FACTS AND FIGURES
Introducing the Foresight obesity report in the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, said:
- 'An obese young man who remains obese, as most are likely to do, will, on average, die 13 years younger than his peer group
- 'Incidents of Type 2 diabetes are set to rise by 70 per cent; attacks of stroke by 30 per cent; and causes of coronary heart disease by 20 per cent
- 'Obesity related diseases will cost the nation an extra £45.5bn a year.'
To that toll on the nation's health, National Obesity Forum chairman, Dr Colin Waine, adds:
- 'Some of the cancers that are the biggest killers are linked to obesity - pancreatic, colonic and post-menopausal breast cancer
- 'Obesity can cause infertility and also problems with pregnancy.'
For more information on the Foresight Report
Tackling Obesities: Future Choices, visit: www.foresight.gov.uk/Obesity/
