Prevention not cure answer to childhood obesity

Responding to reports in today's media that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) will tomorrow recommend new treatments for childhood obesity, including stomach stapling, Richard Watts (Campaign Coordinator of the Sustain's Children's Food Campaign) said:

"Childhood obesity is a serious problem, but we can do much more to stop children becoming overweight or obese in the first place. Instead of expensive and unpleasant surgery we should look to improve children's diets by protecting them from junk food adverts before 9pm and making cookery lessons in school compulsory. Anything else is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted."

He continued: "Academic research from Australia (reported in the Food Magazine) showed that restricting adverts for junk food was a far more cost effective contribution to preventing obesity, costing £3.20 per child for every extra year of good health, compared with £3,600 for a stomach stapling operation".

Ends.

For further information please contact Richard Watts on 0203 5596 777 or 07710 782719 (mobile) or richard@sustainweb.org

Notes to Editors:

2) The Children's Food Campaign wants to improve children's health and well-being through better food - and food teaching - in schools, and protecting children from junk food marketing. We are supported by over 300 organisations, almost 300 MPs and 12,000 members of the public. We were behind the ground-breaking Children's Food Bill introduced into Parliament last year. The Children's Food Campaign is coordinated by Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.

3) The key childhood obesity facts are:

• One in three children is now obese or overweight.
• Obesity in under-11s has risen by over 40% in ten years.
• The International Obesity Task Force estimates that each year in England 220,000 additional children become overweight or obese.
• The Chief Medical Officer has compared the crisis in children's diets to a health 'time bomb' which must be defused.
• The Chair of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has warned that for the first time in more than a century, life expectancy may fall, with the real prospect that parents may outlive their children.