Obesity at all time high among city kids

[1]

Childhood obesity among Chennai’s school-going children might have reached an all-time high.

However, on a brighter note, educating the kids and their parents about the hazards of being overweight may actually make a difference.

Releasing the first set of study results of the “Chennai Slim and Fit Programme” from across 13 CBSE schools in the city in 2008, diabetologist Dr Vijay Vishwanathan also pointed out that a larger number of girls were overweight when compared to boys of the same age—a trend that continues into adulthood. Also, children from more affluent families were more likely to be obese than those from lower middle class.

While the programme has reached around 20,000 school students in the 9-13 age group in the city, 260 were picked out for the study that aimed to assess the impact of such awareness campaigns.

It was found that the prevalence of obesity among the boys was 14.9 per cent and among girls, 17.2 per cent – a huge jump from an average of 12 per cent in 2009 and 6.8 per cent in 1998.

“The worrying thing is that parents still perceive an obese child as a healthy child. When a child does not want to eat or does not empty his lunch box the mother gets flustered and worries about everything from cancer to TB,” says Dr Vijay.

The awareness programme, undertaken by a team consisting of a nutritionist, a physical trainer and a counsellor, involves engaging PowerPoint presentations, activity-based demos of exercises and one-on-one counselling sessions for obese kids.

“We subjected the children to a questionnaire before and after the campaign, and found that their knowledge and awareness about obesity had increased, and their perception towards fitness had also changed drastically.

This is an on-going study, and in a couple of years we will know if such mass awareness campaigns actually have the power to change lifestyles and bring down the obesity rates,” said Dr Vijay, adding that the results had been published in the International Journal of Education and practice.