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.