Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the trends in the level of obesity in children in the last 10 years; and how those trends compare with data from other countries.

Of children aged 2-15, 18.6% were classified as obese using population monitoring thresholds in England in 2005 and 14.0% of children aged 2-15 were classified as obese in 2015. More information is available in ‘Health Survey for England, 2015: Children’s body mass index, overweight and obesity’:

http://digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB22610

Estimated prevalence of overweight and obesity in children has increased in most of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries since 1980. In girls in the United Kingdom, the estimated proportion of overweight (including obese) has increased from 21.0% to 29.2% over the period 1980-2013, a percentage rise of 39%. Similar percentage increases have been estimated for Canada (39%), Japan (39%), Chile (35%) and Denmark (42%).

In boys in the UK, the combined proportion of overweight and obese has increased from 17.6% in 1980 to 26.1% in 2013 a percentage rise of 48%. Similar percentage increases have been estimated for Slovakia (45%), Turkey (45%) and the United States (52%). More information is available here:

https://khub.net/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=1aa529dc-8411-401c-a4f0-f216b28257b9&groupId=31798783