‘Ban fast food shops near schools’
Doctors call on ministers for more action to improve children’s diets and fight the obesity epidemic
FAST FOOD outlets should be banned from opening within 400 metres of every school in the country to tackle the obesity epidemic, doctors say.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is calling for the measure to be part of an updated childhood obesity strategy which the Government is due to publish this summer.
Paediatricians urged ministers to introduce a national programme to weigh and measure children from birth right through adolescence, arguing that “snapshot” weigh-ins taken at the start and end of primary school meant weight problems were spotted too late.
Prof Russell Viner, president of the college, urged ministers to “take a leap of faith” and introduce sweeping powers that would make it easier for councils to keep junk food away from pupils.
One in three children is overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school, with Britain’s obesity rates the worst in Western Europe and rising faster than those in the US.
Next month, the Commons health and social care committee will open hearings for an inquiry on childhood obesity, examining priorities for action. In a submission to the inquiry, the Royal College is calling for a series of measures to combat obesity, starting at the school gates.
Prof Viner told The Daily Telegraph:
“Kids are coming out of school hungry and finding themselves surrounded by cheap chicken shops, chip shops and other types of junk food. This just wasn’t the case 20 or 30 years ago.
“People tend to eat what’s in front of them and we need to make it easier for children to make the right choices.”
Around 20 local authorities have brought in some restrictions on fast food outlets, but others have complained that they lack sufficient powers and face too much red tape to introduce such stringent measures. Research suggests the number of fast-food outlets in England grew by 4,000 between 2014 and 2017, with 1,800 schools having at least 10 such retailers within a 400-metre radius.
The Mayor of London has proposed a ban on any new fast food outlets being built within such a distance. In the submission to MPS, the college calls for this to be extended across the UK.
Prof Viner said action was needed from government to increase planning powers to local authorities to make it easier to bring in such bans. The Local Government Association has also backed such moves.
The submission sets out calls for a national programme to weigh and measure children throughout childhood and adolescence, with data collected by GPS and schools. Currently children are weighed at the age of four or five and again in their final year of primary school, aged 10 or 11.
During that time, the proportion who are obese doubles from 10 to 20 per cent. The college is calling for the programme to be extended from birth right through adolescence, with GPS given training in how to tackle parents about children who gain weight.
Prof Viner said that GPS needed to say things which some parents might find unpalatable. “We need to be prepared to have difficult conversations and to make every contact [with health services] count in the fight against obesity,” he said. The paediatrician also urged the Government to take firm action when it publishes its updated strategy on obesity this summer.
Its initial plans, published in 2016, led to a sugar tax on fizzy drinks brought in this month, but many charities and health groups said the measures did not go far enough.
A ban on advertising of junk foods on television before the 9pm watershed is among the proposals being considered for inclusion in a “second chapter” due to be launched by Theresa May this summer. Prof Viner said: “We have to take a leap of faith to protect current and future generations.”