Health starts at home

HOW is it that kids in Australia are so much fatter and unhealthier than ever before?

When it comes to diet and exercise, our society is smarter and more knowledgeable than it’s ever been.

Today’s children — and their parents — are taught more about nutrition and healthy food choices than any previous generation.

The range of organised sports and pastimes they can — and do — participate in has increased exponentially.

But despite these advances, health groups say one out of every four Victorian kids is now overweight or obese.

Childhood obesity has become a catchcry of its own. It is commonly accepted to be a state and national crisis, even an epidemic.

Yesterday a working group of more than 20 leading health groups unveiled their eightpoint plan to tackle it.

The measures they proposed, as detailed in this newspaper yesterday, are suggestive of where these experts think the problems have arisen that have made so many of our kids fat.

At schools they say kids need to be more physically active, and the tuckshop needs to stock less junk food.

But most of the changes they’ve suggested start at home.

Parents these days should be more educated about nutrition and exercise, but maybe they’re not. The experts clearly don’t believe the wider community’s knowledge is influencing behaviour, and say further lessons need to be delivered.

They want family diets to improve, especially when children are in their earliest years, and they want bans on junk food advertising and restrictions on sponsorships.

They also say children — and adults for that matter — need to walk much more often.

Tellingly, they’ve advocated that healthy eating and physical activity programs need to focus on the areas where the obesity problem is most prevalent.

They’re commonsense solutions that will require substantial public investment. But on a personal level, they contain plenty of good advice that families can follow at home.