But how to do it? Many countries have programme aimed at parents of young children, such as healthy eating sessions, exercise groups, and advice on weaning foods and screen time.
“Trying to prevent obesity very early on at the family level doesn’t really seem to work,” said Professor Anna Lene Seidler, a child health researcher at the University of Rostock in Germany, who was involved with the review, published in The Lancet.
And once children get overweight, they tend to become overweight adults.
But we don’t yet know how to stop young children from getting overweight. Healthy eating advice for parents abounds. But structured advice programmes fail to make much difference when tested in randomised trials, the gold standard of medical evidence.
Children are less physically active than they used to be (Photo: Getty)
In the UK programmes, parents of children up to five years old were targeted, with weekly group sessions on healthy eating, mealtime strategies and boosting activity levels.
Such results support the idea that, rather than blaming parents of overweight children, we need to look at wider society, said Lucy Upton, a paediatric dietitian who has written The Ultimate Guide to Children’s Nutrition.
Children are also less active than they used to be, partly because parents may be reluctant to let their kids play on the street or get themselves to school by walking or cycling. Doctors say such factors add up to an “obesogenic environment”.
The UK was among the first countries to introduce such a tax in 2018, with a levy that nudged firms into reformulating some of their drinks with sweeteners.
But it’s debatable if this had any impact on weight. According to one analysis, it was linked with a slight fall in one group of children, 10- to 11-year-old girls. But it didn’t in boys the same age, or in younger age groups.
Campaigners have long called for stronger measures – for instance, extending the sugar tax to fruit juices and milkshakes (which are exempt) and foods like sweets and biscuits. And they want subsidies for cheaper fruit and veg, healthier school dinners and restrictions on food advertising.
For now, we should be less judgemental about parents whose children are overweight if even the experts don’t know how to stop it from happening, said Upton.
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Read More“Some people are at higher genetic risk, however, if we manage to create better environments, that would help those people,” said Professor Seidler.
“There’s an oversimplification of how easy it should be for parents,” said Upton. “But preventing childhood obesity is exceptionally complex.”
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