Tilting at windmills: the government must do better on obesity

Statistics lend credibility to information, or so they say. Anyway, here are three stats to ponder:

1. The National Audit Office [September 2020] identified 20.2% of 10- to 11-year-old children as being obese in 2018/19
2. Digital NHS UK states adult overweight/obesity in 2018 as 67% men and 60% women
3. On present trends, the vast majority of our children will be overweight or obese in their adult life – and expect one or more diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, vascular dementia to blight their lives and reduce their life expectancy.

The government’s ‘Childhood obesity: a plan for action’ created in August 2016 [Updated January 2017] is making no significant difference to curbing the inexorable increase in obesity in children.

As outlined in the Ofsted report ‘Obesity, healthy eating and physical activity in primary schools’, [Age group 5-11: Published July 2018], schools ‘have responsibility for a curriculum that gives children a solid body of knowledge about healthy living and the skill to pursue it.’

With no appreciable difference being made to counter the increasing numbers of children becoming obese, all the reports and government exhortations to improve children’s health are tilting at windmills.

The radical solution is to raise the attention and focus on fitness and health.

LBL does this by increasing the attention to children’s fitness and health as one of nine priority themes through which all learning is channelled.

The Body theme tackles children’s fitness and health in a relentless and focused whole-curriculum approach.