Fat attack launched on obese kids

The Government is gearing up for a major assault against New Zealand's costly and growing epidemic of child obesity.

Three senior ministers will next month discuss a Cabinet paper on health, education and physical activity initiatives to tackle the problem.

Nearly one in three New Zealand children are overweight or obese.

The blitz has the backing of the Prime Minister, who said this week that the Government was looking at "fresh policies" to tackle child obesity.

"Our rates are disturbing and will deliver poor health long-term to many of our people at a very high cost to the taxpayer," Helen Clark said.

Education Minister Steve Maharey told the Herald yesterday that halting child obesity was one of his priorities.

The 2002 National Children's Nutrition Survey found 31 per cent of New Zealand children were either overweight or obese.

For Maori children the figure rose to 41 per cent, and for Pacific Island children 62 per cent.

Childhood obesity leads to serious health problems including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and hip and joint problems.

With Science Minister Pete Hodgson and Sport and Recreation Minister Trevor Mallard, Mr Maharey is looking to put together a major programme around food, physical activity and lifestyle, which will be run through schools.

He said he could not yet give specific details of the programme, but it would begin at early-childhood level, so young children learned to form the habit of regular physical activity.

"I don't want it just being an exercise programme," Mr Maharey said. "I want it being active, I want it to feed into things like school standards and food and everything."

The financial support provided to schools would have to be examined.

At present the Government is providing $14.5 million over four years to improve physical activity in schools.

Mr Hodgson told the Herald last month that he had directed his officials to steer more money towards obesity-related projects, particularly those related to children.

He wanted to see a faster implementation of the healthy-schools programme, more research into obesity and "lots of things in between".

Robyn Toomath, spokeswoman for the Fight the Obesity Epidemic lobby group, said she was delighted the ministers were confronting the problem. "If this initiative works - if the initiatives have teeth behind them - then this is great news."

For too long sectors such as education had placed all the responsibility for dealing with obesity with the health sector.

"The solutions do not lie in health. They lie in controlling the marketing of food, in provision of opportunities for physical activity and sending kids the right messages from the beginning in schools."

Dr Toomath hoped the Government's initiatives would prevent the sale of junk food and drink in schools and ban the advertising of junk food during children's TV programmes.

In a speech to the Sport and Recreation New Zealand active movement symposium yesterday, Mr Maharey said although the education and health systems had a central role to play in stopping obesity, families and communities could not expect them to solve all the problems.

HEAVY GOING

* Nearly 250,000 school-age children are overweight or obese.

* New Zealand is ranked number seven in an OECD league of the world's most obese nations (20.9pc of adult population).

* That figure is expected to rise to 29 per cent by 2011 as today's children grow up.

* About half a million adult New Zealanders are obese - twice as many as 25 years ago.