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Children's Nutrition Survey confirms childhood obesity is a serious problem – So what is being done?ANA Media Release 7 November 2003The release of the national children's nutrition survey results today by the Minister of Health, Annette King, draws attention to the poor state of children's nutrition in New Zealand. The results confirm what nutrition professionals and the New Zealand public have known anecdotally for some time. The results confirm that almost a third of children between 5 and 14 years are above a healthy weight, and one in ten children are obese. "There are already some very good programmes, both nationally and regionally out there to address children's poor nutrition and physical activity," says Christina McKerchar, Executive Officer of Agencies for Nutrition Action. "What we need now is a real boost of funding to make these programmes bigger and better." At the preschool level the National Heart Foundation of New Zealand has developed a Healthy Heart Award Programme for pre-schools. This innovative programme is designed to improve nutrition and physical activity in early childhood centres. Most children will also be familiar with the 5+ A Day programme developed by United Fresh, to promote increased fruit and vegetable consumption. In the last two months alone, 5 + a Day resources have been distributed to around 1500 pre schools. Te Hotu Manawa M÷ori, a national Māori health provider, has trained and developed resources for Māori health workers to improve nutrition within a Te Kohanga Reo Setting. There is also a range of local initiatives that work with ethnic specific preschools such as the Pacific Islands community gardening initiative developed by the Auckland regional public health service. Programmes aimed at a school level include, 5 + a Day, the Heart Foundation's School Food Programme and Jump Rope for Heart. The Walking School Bus programme, promoted by several local councils, is a national initiative to encourage children to walk to school, and there is also a similar strategy to encourage cycling to school. Many of these programmes are promoted to schools by local public health nutrition and physical activity providers who work with individual schools and parents. For example in Canterbury the public health nutrition and physical activity team has just developed a resource that shows the amount of sugar in drinks that are commonly consumed by children in order to encourage increased consumption of water and milk. One of the problems is the lack of supportive environments for children, says Ms McKerchar. "It's all very well having these great programmes but children quickly realise that what they are being told is not what their school promotes. Many children go to schools where vending machines sell fizzy drinks and the canteen is full of high fat chips and pies." As today (07/11/03) is also national 'Push Play' day many public health promotion teams have worked with regional sports trusts to develop initiatives to support children to be more active. For example in Thames today, preschools are participating in a community hikoi (walk) followed by a healthy 5+ a day picnic lunch. These programmes that support our children are often carried out with limited funding. Similar child nutrition survey results in Australia caused the New South Wales state government to commit $3.5 million to strategies to prevent childhood obesity towards the following programmes.
"We already have some great initiatives in this area, and if these could be further supported with increased funding from the government we could really make a difference. Childhood obesity is a complex issue and the statistics will continue to increase unless we all do our bit as a community. Little things like driving carefully past schools at peak hours, and offering children water instead of sugary drinks will make a difference," says Ms McKerchar.
For further information contact: Christina McKerchar
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