Check Up - Childhood Obesity

If you're one of the many who has tried to lose weight, you’ll know how hard it can be. For children it can be particularly tough. Often excluded from games and teased in the playground, finding the confidence and motivation to tackle the problem can be a challenge in itself. In this special edition of Check Up, Barbara Myers visits the Fulham branch of MEND, a national family-based programme designed to combat childhood obesity. It combines ‘Mind’, ‘Exercise’ and ‘Nutrition’, to help overweight and obese children to lose weight. Her guest is Paul Sacher, Paediatric Dietician at Great Ormond Street, and a pioneer of the MEND programme. He’ll be taking questions from both children and their parents, and offering advice to help the children manage their weight. Obesity is now one of the world’s largest health and social problems. If current trends continue unabated, at least a third of adults, a fifth of boys and a third of girls will be obese by 2020. It’s predicted that many of these children will go on to become obese adults. That’s why it’s crucial to target children as a separate group.