Childhood Obesity and Diabetes

Debate between Diane Abbott and Iain McKenzie

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Davies, to serve under your chairmanship. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) for securing this important and timely debate. Across the UK, childhood obesity is soaring and, with it, diabetes. We need to deal with childhood obesity sensitively and robustly, and we must not make the mistake of thinking that one solution will fit all children. Obesity in childhood is a complicated condition and can have many different causes. Childhood obesity often persists into adult life, and adults who are obese as children have a higher risk of diseases associated with obesity, particularly type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and, yes, even cancer.

The UK has one of the highest levels of childhood obesity among developed countries. I will take a moment to discuss what has been happening in Scotland, because we share that problem. In fact, it is probably multiplied. In common with most of the developed world, Scotland is experiencing an obesity epidemic, and the west of Scotland heads up all the wrong health leagues in Europe. Scotland has one of the highest levels of obesity among OECD countries. Only the USA and Mexico have higher levels. Recent figures show that 26% of adults in Scotland are obese and 65% are overweight. For children, the corresponding rates are 15% and 31%.

Worryingly, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is increasing rapidly in Scotland, as well as across the UK, with the largest part of the increase likely to be due to poor diet and low levels of physical activity, resulting in increased levels of obesity. Our diet in Scotland was a response to a life spent in the heavy industries, but it is totally unsuitable for a career spent in front of a computer screen. Activity levels are far too low to burn off our daily calorie intake. To give children the best start in life, early-life interventions need to begin before and during pregnancy, continue through infancy into early years settings, such as nurseries and childminders, and carry on into primary school.

In my constituency of Inverclyde, we have had to take steps to address the growing problem. Many years ago, we started to educate children and parents about healthy eating. In primary schools, our classes are in competition to see who the healthiest eaters are and which are the most active classes in their school. Our schools have sports co-ordinators, who introduce and encourage kids to participate in a wide variety of sports. It is not only that—our schools link up with local sports clubs to encourage kids to continue to be active after school and at weekends.

As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, we continue to have vending machines in our schools, but in Inverclyde we have put healthy foods in them. Fizzy drinks are no longer available in our schools; the only thing that can be bought from vending machines is water. Granted, it is difficult to get companies to participate in that, but our schools have been encouraged to do it off their own bat, if need be. Fast food and mobile vans have been banned from within a one-mile radius of our schools, so that if a child—especially those in secondary schools—wishes to partake in fast food outlets, at least they have to walk a distance to get there and back.

The early years offer the best opportunity to put in place healthy behaviours around food and physical activity, which will hopefully be sustained into adulthood. Central to that is the involvement of families. Encouragement must start within families to adopt a healthy lifestyle and eat healthier foods. Today, 15 out of every 100 primary school children in Scotland aged between four and a half and five and a half are dangerously overweight. Diabetes is a serious condition that causes heart disease, stroke, amputations, kidney failure and blindness, and more deaths than breast and prostate cancer combined.

Almost a quarter of a million people in Scotland have diabetes. New statistics in the annual Scottish diabetes survey show that the number of people with the condition has continued to increase alarmingly by about 10,000 a year. The majority of those people will have type 2 diabetes, a form of the disease that can be caused by an unhealthy lifestyle and can be so easily prevented. Across all four nations in the UK, we have seen a huge rise in childhood obesity.

We know that losing weight is about more than just altering your diet, but people are different. There are burners and storers. Storers find it difficult to lose weight, but love food—and love the wrong food—and do not take to exercise too keenly. Those additional factors lead to their heading in the wrong direction with their weight, and that can subsequently lead to diabetes. Let us not assume, however, that all is well with the thin people whom we meet, because poor diet can cause problems. We clearly need an approach that combines diet, exercise, the education of children—and, crucially, the education of parents—and psychological support. We need to increase physical activity at primary school and carry that on into secondary school. We need to encourage leisure activities for children to get them involved in sports and away from their computers and TV screens.

[Ms Abbott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, while all the things he said are important, it is also important that children take an intelligent interest in what they are eating? In that respect, Martha, the young woman in Scotland who photographed and blogged about her school lunch, is an example of a young person who is engaged in food quality.

[Mr McKenzie]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and I will give her an example. During my time in local government, I took the opportunity of taking a few school meals with the kids. Was the message getting across? Yes, because they told the teacher that I had only two pieces of fruit and had not taken my five pieces of fruit. The message gets across if it is emphasised time and again.

As I said, we need to increase physical activity at primary school and carry that on into secondary school. The competition for young people’s leisure time has never been greater. Many prefer to play a sport on the Wii than try it for real. The issue is not only with the young, but with the elderly. A unique group called the Globetrotters has recently been set up in my area. It encourages the elderly to be more active and its members have, in their actions—their steps are counted and their trips are mapped out— walked to the moon and are on their way back. “Walking to the moon and back” is the group’s most ambitious trip to date. The Globetrotters is a fantastic example of what can be done from a perspective of physical exercise not needing to be that challenging.

The food industry, as we have heard, needs to take responsibility for the fizzy drinks and sweet foods targeted at children. Healthy eating patterns, as we know, are formed in childhood and taken into adulthood, and new research has warned that suffering obesity as a child may take a bigger toll on health in adulthood than was previously thought. If we do not put in place a varied approach to tackling obesity, a major and irreversible time bomb will be ticking away at our children’s and our nation’s health. Obesity will cost the NHS billions. Obesity-related illnesses already cost the NHS an estimated £5.1 billion a year. If we are to get to grips with it, we need to do a lot more together, starting right now, before the problem becomes worse and the NHS can no longer cope.