Ukmedix News has always argued that education is the key to good nutrition

New research has confirmed that poorly educated parents are more likely to have children who are obese. An extensive study done in Australia shows that the likelihood of obesity in children is halved when the parents are well educated. The study which was conducted by the University of Sydney will be presented to a special Australian parliamentary inquiry that had been set up to deal with the problem of obesity in the country. Almost 350,000 adults were surveyed for the study.

In Australia almost 1/3 of individuals in the lower socio-economic groups are clinically obese compared to only 26.6% eight years ago. In higher socio-economic groups only 17.8% are obese compared to 15.9% in the year 2000. According to Professor Jenny O'Dea who led the studies and who will be arguing for a complete change in policy from the Australian government, the last ten years have been completely ineffective in reducing the number of obese adults and children. In particular she will stress that the"shame and blame'' campaign has been no good and especially has not had any impact on obesity among the poorer individuals in Australia.

Professor Jenny O'Dea stressed the need for proper education with regard to nutrition and food consumption. She explained that parents needed to be told how to read food labels and so they could pass on this education to their children. It was also essential that parents were able to get their hands on fresh fruit and vegetables and other healthy foods cheaply. She went on to explain that it was no good getting angry with parents and “shaking a big stick at them”, but proper nutritional education in schools should be made part of the curriculum.

She argued that that previously schools used to teach home economics but cuts to the education budget meant that children were leaving school with very little knowledge about what food was good to you and what wasn’t.

Ukmedix News has always argued that education is the key to good nutrition and reducing rates of obesity. Incredible as it may sound many obese people have no clue about the reason that they are overweight and feel powerless to do anything about it.