The health of children and young adults in Great Britain is increasingly deteriorating – and an unhealthy diet is a major contributing factor, according to a recent study by the Food Foundation, a charity.
One in five eleven-year-olds leaving primary school now suffers from obesity. The proportion has increased by 30 percent within 15 years.
But children are not only getting fatter, they are also growing less than in the past. Until 2013, the average height of five-year-olds increased continuously, which corresponds to the trend in industrialized nations.
But in Great Britain, this trend is no longer continuing. Boys and girls are now, on average, smaller at the age of five than they were ten years ago.
This is also worrying because overweight children suffer health consequences later in life. The number of adolescents and young adults with type 2 diabetes has increased by 22 percent in the past five years.
There are currently around 12,000 patients under the age of 25 in England and Wales. Until 2000, the disease, which is often associated with severe obesity, was practically unknown in this age group.
Taken together, these developments mean that the healthy life expectancy of children born today – that is, the period of life during which they do not have to deal with serious health problems – is one year lower than it was ten years ago.
“The deterioration in children’s health is a shocking and incredibly sad consequence of the failure of the UK food system,” said Henry Dimbleby, a restaurateur who has advised the government on food issues in the past.
He called on the government to stop the spread of junk food and “to realise that investing in children’s health is an investment in the future of the country”.
The consequences of unhealthy eating and obesity are not only serious for those affected. The necessary medical care also results in considerable costs for society.
In Great Britain, 27.8 percent of the population is considered obese, the highest rate in Western Europe. The government has repeatedly launched measures in recent years to get the problem under control. However, many of these have been implemented half-heartedly at best.
The British government launched 14 different strategies between 1992 and 2020 to tackle obesity, according to the Food Foundation report.
A total of 689 individual measures were planned. Without success: the problem of severe obesity is continuously increasing in the country.
Recent proposals, including a 2020 “national food strategy” drafted by Dimbleby, have often been implemented only half-heartedly, and the government’s food czar has since quit.
A ban on advertising junk food before 9 p.m. has been postponed for the time being, partly due to pressure from the industry. The planned ban on special offers based on the “buy one, get one free” model for unhealthy foods such as potato chips or sweets will also not be implemented until autumn 2025 at the earliest.
“We have long assumed that the combination of malnutrition and severe obesity is a feature of low and middle-income countries. What we are now seeing in the UK of 2024 are the devastating consequences of poverty,” said Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London.
Children are particularly affected by the consequences of the recent rapid rise in the cost of living. At the same time, many social benefits have been cut.
A quarter of the country’s children lived below the poverty line last year, according to British government data. Access to healthy, freshly prepared food is particularly difficult for them, as it is usually more expensive than industrially processed foods and ready meals.
In addition, many measures in recent years have primarily focused on the responsibility of the individual, write the authors of the Food Foundation report.
That didn’t help, so it’s time for new approaches. They recommend putting a stronger focus on making healthy food affordable and easily accessible.
A recent study by the Munich-based life science consultancy Stradoo also shows how important a healthy diet is for children. The scientists based their study on the severity of obesity, using a metric that measures the deviation from normal weight.
Very high levels of obesity in four-year-olds, which are not addressed through appropriate nutritional and weight reduction measures, reduce a child’s life expectancy to 39 years.
Even in less severe cases, life expectancy is significantly reduced, explains Stradoo Managing Director Urs Wiedemann: “The effects of childhood obesity on life expectancy are serious.”
