January 04, 2018
Tots resist obesity tide
New Zealand’s four-year-olds are resisting the tide towards rising obesity.
Researchers funded by the national science challenge A Better Start found the number of children who are overweight, obese or extremely obese declined by 2.2 percent between 2010 and 2016, according to data from the B4 School Check conducted each year on the country’s four-year-olds.
The decline is across the board, across gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and urban and rural children.
Dr Nichola Shackleton of the University of Auckland, the lead author of a paper published in the journal Paediatric Obesity, says while it’s good news for 4-year-olds, the researchers don’t know if the effect continues once they reach school.
The decline needs to be seen in the context of New Zealand’s rates of childhood obesity which remain among the highest in the world.
Obesity is linked to a long list of health conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some forms of cancer.
Obesity contributes to about 9% of all illness, disability and premature death.
Professor Wayne Cutfield, director of A Better Start, says the decline might indicate that health promotion is working on families with young children.
For young children, families have easier access to physical activities and better control on what they eat.
Over the six years of data analysed, the B4 School Check was completed by registered nurses on between 75 percent and 92 percent of four-year olds, about 317,000 children.
The current main source of data on childhood obesity comes from the National Health Survey, which relies on data from fewer than 5000 children, between 0 and 14 years.
That survey estimates 33 percent of children of between 4 and 5 year olds are overweight or obese.
This rises to over 40 percent for Maori, over 50% for Pasifika and 40 percent for children in low socioeconomic areas.
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