there are nearly 22 million children who are classed as overweight

New information which comes from the recently commissioned report by the European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety has come up with some extremely worrying findings regarding the problem of obese and overweight children in the EU.

In Europe there are nearly 22 million children who are classed as overweight and the figure will rise to over 23 million over the next couple of years. The report noted that these high levels of obesity are causing an “epidemic” of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer, and that the problem will only get worse unless serious measures were undertaken.

The report came with a list of recommendations which included healthier food to be served in all schools and kindergartens, legal restrictions on the advertising of food deemed to be unhealthy to children, and much clearer food labelling from manufacturers. The report also said that if obesity was to tackled effectively a “multi level and comprehensive” approach from governments would be needed.

Ukmedix News has seen hundreds of reports on obesity from different parts of the world and we have seen that in order for governments to be successful in getting their citizens to be healthy it is no good to just come up with one or two initiatives every year but it is necessary to come up with an overall plan which attacks the problem of obesity from every single angle.

Another finding of the report was that at present obesity directly accounts for six percent of EU health spending and that there were many indirect costs which should also be taken into account.

At Ukmedix News we sometimes feel that governments spend too much time commissioning reports and discussing the problem of obesity when in fact they should be actually doing something about it. Let us hope that the European Parliament will actually implement some of the recommendations of this report and not add to its reputation as merely a talking shop.