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Toddlers as young as two treated for obesity on NHS, says dietician
Reported January 14, 2009
Toddlers as young as two years of age are being treated for obesity on the
NHS, a dietician has said.
Family doctors are referring the children to specialists to help them lose
weight and eat more healthily.
Clare Baber, a dietician with Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust, in Wales, said
that she was currently treating two toddlers of that age.
While the average weight for a two-year-old child is one stone 12lb (12kg),
she said she was treating one who weighed 2st 9lb (16kg).
She said it was "very worrying" to see young children heavily overweight and
blamed the food they were being fed by their parents.
She added that being overweight from a young age could make it more
difficult to lose weight later.
"The heavier a child is the less active they tend to be because it becomes
harder to run about - it's a vicious cycle that as the child gets overweight
they become less active," she said.
A study carried out by researchers at Swansea University found that 8 per
cent of girls and 5 per cent of boys are now obese by the time they
celebrate their fifth birthday.
Experts warn that they are now starting to see children suffering from Type
2 diabetes, which can be caused by lifestyle factors such as obesity, and
was unheard of in that age group a decade ago.
One in four Britons is now classed as obese, while Gwent has one of the
worst records for obesity in the country.
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