Obesity Action Scotland: New briefing on childhood obesity provides latest data
- Area of Work: Policy and Research
- Type: News Item
- Published: 21st October 2024
Their new briefing also outlines a clear correlation between growing inequalities, increasing deprivation and unhealthy food consumption.
Obesity Action Scotland has published a new briefing on Childhood Obesity. Their briefing is a compendium of the latest evidence on childhood obesity in Scotland and provides an overview of the latest data on rates of childhood obesity, outlines evidence on the growing inequalities gap in child weight outcomes, discusses the evidence on the causes and consequences of childhood obesity, and provides an overview of the current policy scenario in Scotland.
Key highlights from the briefing include:
- In 2018, Scotland set a national ambition to halve childhood obesity to 7% by 2030.
- Despite this, childhood obesity in Scotland is growing alarmingly, with 18% of children aged 2-15 at risk of obesity in 2022.
- The proportion of Primary 1 age children at risk of developing overweight and obesity in academic year 2022/23 was 21.9%. For obesity alone, the proportion of children at risk was 10.5%.
- Concerningly, children from the most deprived areas are more than twice as likely to be at risk of obesity compared to those from the least deprived localities (13.9% vs 6.8%).
- Consumption of sugary soft drinks is more than twice as high among children from the most deprived areas as compared to the least deprived (29.1% vs 13.1%).
These findings reveal the growing inequalities in child weight outcomes across Scotland, indicating a clear correlation between increasing deprivation and unhealthy food consumption. The alarming findings in the briefing further highlight the need for bold and urgent policy action to improve the food environment in Scotland and a critical action in this regard is the implementation of regulations to restrict promotions of unhealthy food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS). Every child has the right to grow up in a healthy environment with easy access to affordable, healthy food, and delivering promotions regulations is critical to making this happen. The most recent consultation on the proposed regulations of promotions of HFSS products was held earlier this year and we are awaiting the outcome of the consultation.
Obesity Action Scotland are calling on the Scottish Government to implement these regulations as quickly and as comprehensively as possible to protect the health of Scotland’s children both now and in the future, and to ensure their rights are protected.
The briefing is available to read and download from their website here.
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