Kiwi 4-year-olds show signs of bucking obesity scourge
New Zealand’s 4-year-olds appear to be resisting the rising tide of obesity considered an epidemic threatening to weigh down our health system.
Researchers trawled through national data to find there had been a slight decline in the rate of overweight or obese kids of that age group.
The just-published finding was nonetheless welcome at a time one in three children aged 4-5 were overweight or obese, a rate that rose to 50 per cent of Pasifika children, and 40 per cent for those in low socioeconomic areas.
New Zealand ranks fourth of 34 OECD countries for children aged 2 to 19 who are overweight and obese, immediately behind the US.
Researchers collaborating under A Better Start, one of New Zealand’s National Science Challenges, analysed data from the B4 School Check, a health check conducted each year on 4-year-olds. They found a 2.2 per cent decline in the number of youngsters overweight, obese or extremely obese between 2010-2016.
The decline was across the board, spanning gender, ethnicity, urban and rural children, and even socioeconomic status.
While there was a need to monitor whether the trend held up over time, the figures were in line with international reports of decreasing child obesity prevalence from developed countries.
“The research has found a small decline in what has been a rising tide of obesity in our children,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Nichola Shackleton, of the University of Auckland.
“While that’s good news . . . we don’t know if this effect continues once they reach school.”
The research was a collaboration between the Challenge Healthy Weight and Big Data research teams at Auckland, Otago, Massey universities, and Uppsala University in Sweden.
Over the six years, the B4 School Check was completed by registered nurses on between 75 per cent and 92 per cent of kids aged 4, about 317,000 children.
The science challenge’s director, Professor Wayne Cutfield, of the Auckland University-based Liggins Institute, said the decline might indicate that health promotion was working on families with young children. For young children, families had better control of what they eat.
Challenge co-director Professor Barry Taylor, of Otago University, said the research also showed the power of the Integrated Data Infrastructure, the project to bring publicly gathered data together for research.
“By matching the B4 School Check data with Census information, it has been possible to generate community level information that can be shared to lift the health of their neighbourhoods,” he said.
The current main source of data on childhood obesity comes from the National Health Survey, which relies on data from fewer than 5000 children, aged from birth to 14 years. The study was the first of 11 planned over the next two years that looked at links between early life events and childhood obesity.
Those included being born early, late, too small, too large, at increased maternal age, or exposed to maternal antibiotics during pregnancy and in early childhood.