Oct 16, 2017
The Daily Mail – Claudia Tanner
The NHS is facing ‘a ticking time bomb’ because today’s youngsters are leading such unhealthy lifestyles, experts have warned. Poor diet, smoking and a lack of exercise are to blame as figures show one in five secondary school aged children are already obese. Late teenage years have been identified as the peak age for exposure to health risks with lifelong implications. Yet the health service is not prepared to cope with the ‘forgotten generation’ and the burden that they will pose in the future, researchers say. The report, by the Association for Young People’s Health (AYPH), revealed teenagers eat eight times the recommended sugar allowance and almost half have tooth decay. (more)
Oct 16, 2017
The Irish Examiner – Sharon Ní Chonchúir
Official guidelines suggest that school-age children need between 1,600 and 2,500 calories a day, depending on their age, body weight, and activity levels. But instead of focusing on numbers, Orla Walsh, a dietician with the Dublin Nutrition Centre, thinks it might be better to look at the nutritional value of food. “By exchanging certain foods for lower energy density foods, this can result in a child eating the same volume of food but lower overall calories,” she says. “A simple way to do this is to add more fruit and vegetables to the diet.” (more)
Oct 15, 2017
IOL – Helen Ingle and Susan Coan
Getting children off the sofa, away from the TV and outside can be a challenging task for any parent, particularly in the age of increasingly sedentary and screen-focused lives. To stay healthy, it is recommended that children do at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily. But this has been in decline in recent years. And now only 21% of boys and 16% of girls are meeting the recommendations. (more)
Oct 15, 2017
The Gulf Times – Staff Writer
The number of obese children and adolescents worldwide has jumped tenfold in the past 40 years and the rise is accelerating in low- and middle-income countries, especially in Asia, a major study said last week, reigniting concern about the issue. Childhood and teen obesity rates have levelled off in the US, north-western Europe and other rich countries, but remain “unacceptably high” there, researchers at Imperial College London and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. (more)
Oct 14, 2017
The Chicago Sun Times – Laura Washington
Dr. Icy Cade-Bell cares. A pediatrician for nearly 30 years, she knows high sugar consumption leads to deadly outcomes. “Everybody knows pop is not good for you or, rather, you should not drink a lot of pop,” she said when we met last week. Yet she battles childhood obesity every day, treating children and adolescents at Comer Children’s Hospital and the Friend Family Health Center on Chicago’s South Side. (more)
