Tough love classes that will reverse the rise in child obesity
PIONEERING classes that teach parents to be stricter with their children could reverse Britain’s obesity epidemic, it was claimed last night.
The eight-week £50 course encourages adults to show who’s in charge and tackles ‘pester power’, healthy eating and bedtimes.
Since the classes were introduced in Leeds a decade ago, the rise in obesity levels has reversed among four and five-year-olds. The city has seen the proportion who are obese fall from 9.4 per cent in 2014 to 8.8 per cent in the three years to 2016.
That’s a vast improvement on the obesity crisis in England, where, in the same period, the rate stayed largely the same.
When children leave primary school, more than a third are now overweight, one in ten are obese and 4.1 per cent are severely obese. That has contributed to a diabetes timebomb, with nearly 7,000 under-25s receiving treatment for the condition in England and Wales in 2016/17. Obesity costs the NHS in England £6.1 billion a year.
Kim Roberts, chief executive of the national charity Henry, which provides the classes, said: ‘To see this kind of reduction is unprecedented.
‘The indicators are that this isn’t happening in other cities.’
Professor Susan Jebb, who led a study on the strategy from the University of Oxford, said: ‘The most dramatic thing is if you look at it by deprivation, the most deprived group [where obesity levels are generally higher] in Leeds is doing especially well. That is astonishing.’
Professor Jason Halford, an obesity expert from the University of Liverpool and chairman of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, said: ‘This approach may seem to be common sense. But it empowers parents to help children by giving them choices rather than pushing them into healthy behaviours, which they may find offputting. It is very encouraging to see this working at a community level and it could be an important tool in tackling child obesity.
‘We just need more evidence from other cities to prove it works.’
The two-month Henry programme, which stands for ‘Health, Exercise, Nutrition for the Really Young, has been rolled out in 34 local authority areas since 2008.
The study of the Leeds programme, presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Glasgow, is the first to assess its potential effects on child obesity. Mrs Roberts, of Henry, said: ‘Authoritarian parenting is when children are told what to eat and what to do, such as being banned from leaving the table until they have eaten their sprouts.
‘Permissive parenting is asking children what they want to do.
‘But Henry encourages a third approach known as authoritative parenting, where parents make it clear they are in charge, but also respond to their children.’
Every health visitor, nursery nurse and children’s centre worker in Leeds has been trained in the Henry approach, totalling more than 1,000 professionals. The training programme, held at children’s centres, has been attended by 10,000 families since 2009.
Professor Jebb said: ‘It’s not about blame, it’s about helping parents find solutions.’
‘This is very encouraging’