Time to tackle childhood obesity head on

Childhood obesity is, as we know, a major issue and one that is affected by pre-birth maternal behaviour, early dietary habits, and with a strong link to poverty and cheap, high-sugar food. And the acute problem has not yet been around long enough to know exactly how severe its impact will be in life expectancy, but the indications are that it will be considerable. One of the problems is that when most children are chubby, that becomes the new norm.

That's why the NHS monitoring programme is so important, but also why it is so important to communicate unwelcome messages to parents in a way that changes behaviour, not just antagonises them. I've just been reading a school newsletter about the evaluation of the monitoring programme, and fear it falls into the trap of finding out from a self-selected sample what everyone already knows.

Sometimes we don't need surveys and focus groups, we just need to act.

Back to overweight children, I used to say - facetiously - that as a director I was responsible for 4,200 tonnes of children, with a target of 3,500 tonnes. This made a broader set of points about the nature of targets, averages and perverse incentives!