Abstract
World Health Organization Establishes Childhood Obesity Commission
During her opening address to the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan voiced her deep concern about the worldwide increase of childhood obesity. She stated that numbers are climbing fastest in developing countries. She established a high-level Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity, co-chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, Chief Science Advisor to New Zealand's Prime Minister, and Sania Nishtar, Founder of Pakistan's health policy think tank Heartfile. They will produce a consensus report identifying which approaches are most likely to be effective in different areas around the globe and release the findings at next year's WHA. Two working groups will support the commission, one on the science and evidence and another on implementation, mentoring, and accountability.
Chile Considers Tax on High Salt and Sugar Foods
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet sent to Congress a proposed 18% tax on sugary drinks. However, a group of parliamentarians presented to the Chile Minister of Health a bill to increase the tax on foods high in salt and sugars by 30% to help reduce the rate of childhood obesity in the country. Representative Daniel Farcas said that such measures have been successful in other countries in changing consumption habits. He said that better consumption would lead to better health. Thirty-four percent of young children in Chile are overweight or obese. The food and beverage industries are opposed to increasing the taxes on their products.
Grocery Store Bans Sweets from Checkout Aisles
The grocery chain Tesco in the United Kingdom (UK) will remove chocolates from small store checkout lines by the end of the year. It had eliminated the sweets from this prime location 20 years ago from its large stores. Tesco's action comes in response to research that found 65% of its shoppers reported that eliminating sweets in that location would help them make healthier choices, and 67% said it would aid in their making healthier choices for their children. Tesco said that it is the first major retailer in the UK to “remove confectionery from checkouts across the full range of store formats, including smaller Metro and Express stores.” The grocer will test a variety of healthy products at its checkouts before implementing the plan.
Company Offers Web-Based Nutrition Calculator
Nestlé Kenya, through its MILO® brand, introduced a Web-based nutrition calculator for parents. The tool helps them determine the nutrition component of their children's meals, assess their activeness, and schedule children's sports activities. Nestlé designed the Nutrition Calculator for parents of children ages 6–12 years. It provides daily nutrient recommendations and daily energy needs. The Web-based tool also adds to the ongoing campaign by Nestlé Kenya to encourage Kenyan families to practice good breakfast eating habits that promote health and active energetic lifestyles. Nestlé plans to develop a similar mobile app version for Android and iOS platforms.
Canadian Nursing Organization Releases Prevention Recommendations
The Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario in Canada has issued a new set of recommendations aimed at the prevention of childhood obesity, entitled Primary Prevention of Childhood Obesity, 2nd edition. It covers a range of topics from better early child health to policies about marketing food and beverages. The guidelines report on societal factors that contribute to today's high obesity rates, such as dining in fast food restaurants, eating processed foods, and spending more time doing sedentary activities. It also discusses environmental factors, such as poverty, and the need to develop public health policies to address the problem. The guidelines, implementation resources, and related fact sheets are available at no cost at the organization's website: http://rnao.ca/bpg/guidelines/primary-prevention-childhood-obesity
Belgium Researchers Link Stress with Adiposity in Children
A new study presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Sofia, Bulgaria, found an association between children's stress, hormones, diet, and increasing body fat. The team measured stress, food consumption, psychological eating behavior, and adiposity in 312 Belgian children ages 5–12 years. Stress increased adiposity in children with high sweet food consumption or high level of the cortisol hormone. Nathalie Michels, Department of Public Health, Ghent University, Belgium, and colleagues suggest that targeting stress in addition to other lifestyle factors could be an effective measure for controlling child obesity.
Australia Promotes Walking Safely to School
National Walk Safely to School Day in Australia raised community awareness about the benefits of walking to and from school. The event also promoted safety messages, such as children younger than 10 years holding the hand of an adult when crossing a road. This year, the Pedestrian Council of Australia, which coordinates the event, added a free, interactive app to help increase motivation within schools and families. The app measures the distances that children walk and their average speeds. It provides maps to help plan routes and a scoreboard so schools can track their students' walking achievements.
Israeli Study Shows Multidisciplinary Team Effective in Reducing Weight
Researchers in Tel Aviv, Israel, investigated whether an intensive weight reduction treatment in a clinic serving obese and overweight children, who had failed previous treatment attempts, was effective. The practice-based intervention at a health maintenance organization included education of the parents, individual consults, and physical activity classes. The team enrolled 100 overweight and obese children ages 5–14 years and their parents and 943 controls and their parents. Postintervention, they found that the z-score in the intervention group was lower than in the comparison group, and the reduction held during the 46.7-month average follow-up. The researchers concluded, in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, that “this multidisciplinary team treatment of children and their parents in family health care clinics positively affected measures of childhood obesity.”
New Zealand Professors Call for Regulation of Television Time
Researchers Helena McAnally and Robert Hancox at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote, in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, that governments should adopt policies to “reduce excessive media consumption.” They discuss the long-term consequences of too much time spent watching television (TV) and that viewing time in adolescence and early adulthood is associated with a greater risk of developing metabolic syndrome by the time people are middle aged. They acknowledge that it will be difficult as parents use the TV to entertain children, youngsters resist attempts to limit screen time, and governments consider technology a key to progress. The researchers make the point that children are not able to make wise choices about long-term risks of such behavior. Therefore, it is time for researchers and public health practitioners to advocate for reduced screen time.
Toronto Hospital Creates New Center To Promote Healthy Lifestyles
The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, has established the Centre for Healthy Active Kids to better serve overweight and obese children. More than 30% of Canadian children are overweight or obese. The center conducts research and provides education and clinical care for pediatric weight-related disorders. It promotes healthy nutrition and physical activity for all children and adolescents, regardless of their body weight. The center's clinical team believes that early intervention helps ensure children stay on a healthy life path. The researchers also are investigating how exercise can benefit cancer patients and improve overall physical function. The SickKids Team Obesity Management Program (STOMP), which works with youngsters undergoing bariatric surgery, also is now run out of the center.
Saudis Consider Lifting Ban on Girls' Sports
The Shura Council in Saudi Arabia recommended to the education ministry that the country's long-standing ban on sports in girls' state schools be lifted. A heated debate between those concerned with childhood obesity and traditionalists preceded the decision. If approved, girls could play sports within the limits of Islamic law, such as wearing appropriate dress and following gender separation. Private gyms for women were shut down in 2009 and 2010. However, the country lifted the sports ban for private schools last year.
Exposing Infants to Vegetables Encourages Consumption
Children exposed to a new vegetable at an early age tend to eat more of it, compared to if the vegetable is introduced at an older age, according to a study in PLOS ONE. A research team, led by Professor Marion Hetherington in the Institute of Psychological Sciences at the University of Leeds in the UK, gave artichoke puree to 332 children ages 4–38 months in the UK, France, and Denmark. The team chose artichoke because parents do not usually offer it to their young children. Each child was fed 5–10 servings of at least 100 g of the puree. The younger children ate more of the artichoke than the older children. The researchers explained that, at 24 months, children become more reluctant to try new things and will reject foods, even those they previously ate.
Interactive Online Sessions Promote Healthy Eating
The Home-Start Family Services program in Australia offered interactive information sessions at a variety of schools and community centers this summer as part of the Eat, Move, Live healthy eating program. Participants could learn whether their child is a normal weight or too heavy, discover easy-to-prepare and inexpensive nutritious meals, and learn ways to involve the entire family in daily physical activity. Previous research has shown that approximately 30% of Australian parents do not recognize that their children are overweight, because it is so common, reported Program Coordinator Val Watson.
Light Exercise and Sedentary Behavior a Children's Health Risk
Low levels of physical activity combined with heavy use of electronic media and sedentary behavior are associated with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes and vascular diseases in children as early as 6–8 years of age, according to a Finnish study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. The researchers of the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children Study (PANIC), an ongoing lifestyle intervention study carried out at the University of Eastern Finland, concluded that “increasing total and unstructured physical activity and decreasing watching TV and videos and other sedentary behaviors” could reduce cardiometabolic risk among children.