Childhood Obesity in UK - Essay Example

The 2002 Health Survey for England made a disturbing declaration that over half of the UK population was overweight or obese. In the same year, the National Office of Statistics (NOS) came up with a more detailed report, blowing up the problem by saying that obesity was affecting children more than adults. The NOS revealed that 22 percent of all boys and 28 percent of all girls in the 2-15 age bracket were either overweight or obese. The study raised the same alarm by asserting that about 1 million of all obese persons in UK were less than 16 years old, indicating a steady and rapid yearly increase in the prevalence rate for childhood obesity in the country.

This is a cause for general concern because obesity in childhood tends to be irreversible and obese adults are highly vulnerable to a range of ailments that include heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and certain strains of cancer. Since the future of a nation lies in the hands of its children, what future awaits a nation with a disease-prone citizenry? This upward trend in the prevalence rate of obesity started as early as the 1970s with the release of a number of government studies, notably the 1974-94 National Study of Health and Growth and the 1995 Health Survey for England.

Between 1984 and 1994, the reports noted a doubling in the prevalence of obesity among British children, from 0.6 percent to 1.7 percent in boys and from 1.3 percent to 2.6 percent in girls. Among adults, the prevalence rate rose from 6 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 1998 in men. and from 8 percent to 21 percent in women. Obesity is determined by measuring a person's body mass index (BMI), or the body weight according to height, rate of growth, sex and age. Among boys, they are obese if 25 percent of body weight is flab, while it is 32 percent in girls.

Based on the BMI measurement of the general population in the succeeding 10-year period (DoH, 2004; POST, 2003; RCP, 2003;