Empowering Healthy Kids Blog

Apparently obesity rates have levelled off over the last decade:

Professor Tim Olds, from Uni SA, says one in five children is still battling with weight issues, but that is no greater than a decade ago.

“If you had a look at the data until certainly the early 2000s and you put them all together, it really did look as if things were increasing exponentially - there was a runaway increase in overweight and obesity,” he said.

“So it’s not that these people misinterpreted the data, it’s just that recent data has shown a change in the pattern.

“When we put all those studies together, and they encompass about 70-80,000 children, what we noticed was there was a very clear flattening out of the prevalence the rate of overweight and obesity in children, it started in the late 90s and it’s continued until today.”

Professor Olds was quick to point out that the survey did not mean childhood obesity was not a serious problem in Australia.

I have to take issue with ABC Online’s headline: “Rising childhood obesity a myth: study.” I saw no mention Professor Olds that rising childhood obesity levels are a myth - he still acknowledges that it is still a problem. So it’s not surprising that we get the counter headline and article not two hours later:

Childhood obesity no myth: health expert

Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute of W-A, Mike Daube says the claims are ludicrous.

He says childhood obesity is still a serious problem and now fears people could become complacent.

“Of course it can’t keep increasing exponentially, you know there comes a stage where it has to plateau out but if it’s plateauing out at the height of Everest rather than the height of Bluff Knoll then we need to do something about it,” he said.

“There is are real risk that we say, well the problem isn’t increasing as fast as it was so there isn’t a problem and that’s the wrong way to look at it.

“What we need to say is we have a massive problem if it’s plateauing that’s encouraging but we still have an obesity epidemic.”

Spot the difference? There is none really, both Daube and Olds agree that it’s still a problem.

Earlier articles on obesity levelling off here and here.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 10:57 am and is filed under australia, research, childhood obesity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.