County ‘is doing right things over obesity’
THE KEY to tackling childhood obesity lies in making healthy choices easy, according to the public health boss of a county with the lowest proportion of very overweight youngsters in the North and Midlands.
As celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall this week launched campaigns over food firms’ marketing of junk food to children, Government statistics were released showing North Yorkshire was holding back the national epidemic in childhood obesity.
North Yorkshire County Council’s director of public health Dr Lincoln Sargeant said while he had been buoyed by the figures suggesting the county “was doing the right things”, it remained some way from reversing the trend.
The Government figures from the National Child Measurement Programme show almost one in five (19.6 per cent) children in England leave primary school aged 11 classified as obese.
Some 15.7 per cent of North Yorkshire’s 11-year-olds are obese, which is among the lowest for 350 local authority areas in England, and is lower than neighbouring authorities such as Darlington (21.2 per cent) and County Durham (22 per cent).
Dr Sargeant said childhood obesity was linked to deprivation, but it appeared the county’s 10year Health Ways, Healthy Lives strategy launched in 2016 was having some effect. He said his specialists would have to work to continue countering the trend. The strategy includes training for health visitors and alerting parents if their child had been found to have a high body mass index.