British children face a lifetime of poor health as junk food diets have stunted their growth and fuelled a rise in obesity and type-2 diabetes, a damning report warns.
The Food Foundation says kids are growing up in an environment that makes feeding them healthily ‘an almost impossibly difficult challenge’.
It blames the ‘aggressive promotion’ of food that is high in fat, sugar and salt and ‘shocking’ levels of poverty that put healthier alternatives out of reach for some families.
Policies to improve nutritional intake have been ‘lacklustre and wholly insufficient’ to address the severity of the problem, the charity adds.
The consequence is the ‘disconcerting deterioration’ in children’s wellbeing, with babies born today expected to enjoy a year less good health than those born a decade ago.
Over a million children had their height and weight measured under the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP). Nationally, the rate among children in Year 6 stands at over a third, despite having fallen slightly since Covid began
Among Year 6 pupils, national obesity fell from 23.4 per cent in 2021/22 to 22.7 per cent. Meanwhile, the proportion of children deemed either overweight or obese also dipped, from 37.8 per cent to 36.6. Both measures are above pre-pandemic levels
The report highlights the ‘deeply worrying’ rise in conditions driven by ‘calorie-dense diets’, such as obesity and type-2 diabetes.
But it stresses there has been an ‘equally concerning’ and ‘paradoxical’ rise in undernutrition, which is hampering children’s mental and physical development.
Obesity among 10 and 11-year-olds has increased by 30 per cent since 2006 and over one in five children are now obese by the time they leave primary school.
The first cases of adolescent type 2 diabetes were diagnosed in the UK in 2000 and have increased substantially since then, with levels tripling between 2012/13 and 2020/21, the report notes.
Meanwhile, the average height of 5-year-olds has been falling since 2013, after years of progress, with British boys ranked shortest and girls second shortest among developed nations.
This followed a reduction in the consumption of key nutrients, including calcium, zinc, vitamin A, folate and iron.
The report — A Generation Neglected: Reversing the decline in children’s health in England — warns that failing to get a grip on the underlying issues will lead to ‘a generation burdened throughout their lives by diet-related illness’.
It says eight in ten obese adolescents remain obese as adults, increasing their risk of heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.
Furthermore, this obesity costs the UK an estimated £98billion a year.
The report adds: ‘These findings raise fundamental questions regarding the nutritional quality of food that children are eating, in addition to wider socio-economic forces that shape the conditions for the optimal growth and development of young children.
‘For all children to thrive and grow up healthy, it is essential they have access to a diet that provides all the essential nutrients.
‘What is so deeply troubling about the health problems highlighted in this report is that they are largely preventable.
‘No child needs to suffer in this way if they are simply able to have a basic right of access to healthy food.
‘All children should be able to eat in way that fuels their bodies and minds, giving them sufficient calories and nutrients to be free from hunger and diseases of nutritional deficiency, while being protected from the bombardment of ultra-processed, highly sugary and salty foods that most often contribute to excess calorie intake but lack vitamins, minerals, fibre, healthy fats and quality protein.’
Anna Taylor, executive director at The Food Foundation, described the situation as a ‘national embarrassment’ and said giving children access to nutrition they need should be their right.
Baroness Anne Jenkin, a Conservative peer and food poverty campaigner, said: ‘The state of the nation’s health, especially our children’s, has never been worse and almost no one is talking about it.
‘This is a time bomb waiting to explode if action isn’t taken.’
Henry Dimbleby, the former government food tsar and author of the National Food Strategy, said: ‘The decline in children’s health shown clearly in this report is a shocking and deeply sad result of the failures of the food system in the UK.
‘We need the next Government to take decisive action to make healthy and sustainable food affordable, stem the constant flow of junk food and to realise that investing in children’s health is an investment in the future of the country.’
And former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: ‘Every mother and father in the land will be concerned and shocked at what is happening to children through lack of nutrition.’
