Education And Exercise Are The Key To Tackling Childhood Obesity
Education And Exercise Are The Key To Tackling Childhood Obesity
More than 1.7 million pupils from over 4,300 nursery, primary and secondary schools will take part in Healthy Eating Week this week.
The idea is to promote healthy diets and being more active, as well as improve the understanding of where food comes from and cooking.
Right now 1 in 3 children leaving primary school is overweight or obese!
With these shocking statistics should we be surprised to hear that in a recent survey of 13,100 school children across the UK for the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) – 25% of children aged between 5 and 8 years old thought bread came from animals. And 14% of 8 to 11 year olds had the same misconception.
More than a quarter (26%) of 5 to 8 year olds and 22 percent of 8 to 11 year olds think that cheese comes from plants.
Nearly a fifth of primary school children said that potatoes come from animals.
Another quarter of primary school children, plus more than one in 10 (13%) of 8 to 11 year olds, indicated that pasta comes from animals.
One in every 10 primary school children surveyed thinks that bacon comes from sheep, while 17% think that fish fingers come from chicken.
Encouragingly, around a fifth of older children (11 to 16 year olds) want to know more about where their food comes from. This is where Healthy Eating Week comes in.
As well as education pupils in schools across the country, youngsters are also being encouraged to ‘sit less and move more’ by meeting the national recommended amount of 60 minutes physical activity each day.
So do something Brilliant today, talk to the young people in your family about the origins of food and inspire them to do something active!
For more information and advice visit the British Nutrition Foundation: www.foodafactoflife.org.uk or pop in to your nearest Active Nation venue to see what sport and exercise activities are on offer for youngsters.
Leave a Comment
Your Feedback
We love to have a conversation! It’s great to receive your feedback, good or bad, its important that we hear about it.
We don’t always claim to have all the answers, but we do make sure that we ask the right questions. Here are some examples of how we listened to what you had to say and what we did to fix it!
-
-
Text 'ANUK01 £1' to 70070 to make a £1 donation.
