School letters sent to parents telling them their children are overweight should not be watered down despite widespread anger, the chief medical officer has said, arguing against the “normalisation” of obesity.
Dame Sally Davies was speaking as new figures emerged from the child measurement programme that showed levels of obesity among children are still getting steadily worse. Twice as many children – nearly 20% – are obese in year 6 as in reception, where 9.3% are obese.
More than one in five children start school either overweight or obese, and by the time they leave primary school, that is one in three. “What on earth are we doing?” asked Dame Sally.
“What worries me is how we have started to normalise it,” she said. “In my generation it was normal to see [children’s] ribs on the beach. That was healthy. How have we lost this national understanding of what is healthy and what is unhealthy?”
There were now size 16 mannequins in shop windows and fat can be beautiful, she said, but added: “It isn’t healthy. Here, we are talking about children and children can’t talk for themselves. They need to be helped.”
When children are measured in school and found to be overweight or obese, the parents received a letter from the school, advising them on where to get help and advice. Some become angry. Postings on social media urge parents to throw the letters in the bin.
But Dame Sally said the letters should spell out the problem. “I don’t think we should water down those letters,” she said at the Childhood Obesity Summit, held in London. “There was a move to stop them saying your child is obese because people felt it was offensive and went into denial. But it is a physical description.”
Work needed to be done on how to encourage people to take action. “It is a real worry to me,” she said.
Obesity is a very serious issue for the NHS, she said, costing £5.1bn in a single year in England alone. There were further huge costs to productivity and the economy. “We are spending more every year on the treatment of obesity and diabetes than we do on the police, fire service and judiciary combined,” she said.
She is concerned by the growing snacking culture, she said. “I was absolutely aghast to read about how crisp packet sizes have increased. Food is everywhere. We are doing much more snacking and eating out.”
People are grazing rather than eating regular meals around a table with others, she said. Teenagers who came to stay with her would be found at the fridge, snacking. “Snacking is now a £375bn industry worldwide.”
Dr Sarah Wollaston, Conservative chair of the parliamentary health select committee, deplored the omissions from the government’s childhood obesity strategy. “I don’t think we should consider what is in the national plan as the job done,” she said.
“It was particularly disappointing to see promotions and price promotions fall out of the original draft – 40% of everything consumed at home is bought on promotion. A staggering amount of that is unhealthy food and drink.”
The emphasis in the strategy is on industry reformulation of food – and particularly to remove 20% of sugar over time. Wollaston wanted to know what would happen to companies that did not take part.
“What should it look like if in a year from now nothing has happened or some sections of the industry have completely ignored this? What will be the penalty to stop sections of the industry going back to where it was before?”
Alison Tedstone, director of diet and obesity at Public Health England, said that removing 20% of sugar – 5% in the first year to August 2017 – from products was only the first step. Next year the government’s scientific advisory committee on nutrition would be reporting on saturated fat in the nation’s diet – which is also too high. PHE will then be talking to industry about reducing saturated fats and also calories in foods.
Health chief: obesity warning letters to parents must not be watered down
