Nursery World - Obesity is not an epidemic

By Peter Marsh, director of the Social Issues Research Centre Claims that childhood obesity is at epidemic levels and rising exponentially are no more than unsupported speculation, according to analysis by the Social Issues Research Centre on recent data from the annual Health Survey for England 2003, published by the Department of Health on 14 December 2004. Our new analysis shows that:

Our new analysis shows that:

* Body mass index (BMI) trends were broadly flat for both boys and girls aged under 16 years in the period 1995 to 2003.

* The UK national standard for assessing child obesity, used by the Government's recent public health White Paper, overstates the scale of the child obesity problem - 15.5 per cent obese - compared with the less arbitrary international standard of 6.75 per cent obese.

* Although the rates of increase under both measures are broadly similar (60-70 per cent), the difference between the numbers of children defined as obese is likely to have a significant impact on the appropriateness and scale of measures to tackle the problem.

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