A new report has found that children in the UK are getting shorter and more obese because of poor diets, food insecurity and poverty.
The report from campaigning organisation The Food Foundation found that the average height of five-year-olds is falling, obesity levels have increased by almost a third and the number of young people being diagnosed with type-2 diabetes has risen by more than a fifth.
Researchers at the foundation said: ‘Aggressive marketing of cheap ultra-processed food, diets lacking essential nutrition and high levels of poverty and deprivation are driving the significant decline in children’s health.’
- The childhood obesity crisis
- The suffocating cost of poverty
- Over half a million people at risk of type-2 diabetes
The report found that declining children’s consumption of key micronutrients in food has been causing the decrease in average height. In the decade up to 2019, UK children have been eating 4% less calcium, 18% less vitamin A and 6% per cent less iron.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school. As a result, cases of type-2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added.
The researchers attributed poor diet and obesity to the rising poverty in the UK. There are 4.3 million children living in poverty, the highest level since records began over 20 years ago.
Health leaders have called on the government to take sustained action to address this crisis affecting children.
Anna Taylor, executive director of The Food Foundation, said the health problems prompted by poor diets were ‘entirely preventable’. ‘Politicians across the political spectrum must prioritise policies that give all children access to the nutrition they need to grow up healthily, as should be their right.’
Henry Dimbleby, author of the National Food Strategy said: ‘The decline in children’s health shown clearly in this report is a shocking and deeply sad result of the failures of the food system in the UK. We need the next government to take decisive action to make healthy and sustainable food affordable, stem the constant flow of junk food and to realise that investing in children’s health is an investment in the future of the country.’