England

Child obesity epidemic growing in Britain

From Science Daily

LONDON, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- The British government has acknowledged a severe obesity epidemic, with almost half of all British children predicted to be dangerously overweight by 2050.

Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls said the rate of obesity among children was rising at a very alarming rate, Britain's The Observer reported.

Balls said just 12 years ago, less than 10 percent of all schoolchildren were considered obese, but that number has jumped to almost 17 percent.

The government has put new restrictions on the content of school lunches. But many experts say restrictions are useless unless parents become more involved in the fight against childhood obesity, the newspaper reported.

Comment: From what we are seeing here in the States, ditto on changing school lunches from glutenous muck to healthful nutritious and fun lunches.

While out last week I heard a young mother tell me about a dinner she had prepared for her family that included a meat, two kinds of potatoes, rice, macaroni and cheese, grits and corn. There was no other vegetable or salad. No wonder children get fat. One starch to a meal, please!

When the obese teen behind the checkout counter doesn't know a cabbage from lettuce, what a mango is, that a blueberry differs from a raspberry, or that a cantaloupe is different from a honeydew or that a peach is not the same as a nectarine, there is a problem.

These things need to be learned at home, and reinforced in preschool.