Parents will be given nutrition lessons to tackle the nation’s obesity epidemic
EXCLUSIVE: PARENTS who feed their babies junk food will be the target of a new program to slash the nation’s obesity rates and stop the epidemic at its roots.
NSW
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PARENTS who feed their babies junk food and soft drink will be the target of a new program to slash the nation’s obesity rates and stop the epidemic at its roots.
Mums and dads of newborns will be taught basic nutrition rules such as pureeing vegetables and educated in what not to give their babies.
Parents will be recruited in maternity wards for the new program as authorities shift their focus to the youngest Australians battling the bulge.
The latest assault on the obesity epidemic follows the success of Go4Fun, a free weight-loss program for seven to 13-year-olds that was used by more than 8000 parents.
NSW Health’s centre for population health executive director Jo Mitchell said the new program was a key plank of their push to reduce childhood obesity by 5 per cent by 2025.
If successful, there will be 62,000 fewer overweight or obese children.
About 25 per cent of two-year-olds are overweight or obese.
“Because our target is a very ambitious one, we know we have to work across all ages, in as many settings as possible using as many different approaches,” Ms Mitchell said.
NSW Health’s office of preventive health director Professor Chris Rissel said targeting young children was “very much the way forward”.
“The weight gain is happening very early ... that’s why it’s important to intervene,” he said
Maternity wards in Sydney, the city’s southwest and eastern suburbs, and the Murrumbidgee region will recruit the parents of 1000 newborns.
They will receive health information via letters, text messages and phone calls until their child is two.
Parents will also be advised to ban screens until children are two and increase tummy time so babies can be physically active.
They will be given a list of ideal foods, with information on pureeing vegetables, and be instructed not to give their baby soft drink.
“It is the basics. It is a very good thing to repeatedly remind parents about what the right thing to do is, it’s very easy to get distracted and parents get can get inconsistent advice,” Prof Rissel said.
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Information also includes maintaining breastfeeding for six to 12 months and delaying feeding babies solids until six months.
“The earlier you introduce solids, the more calories the child is consuming — so there is potential for rapid weight growth in that period and that’s a predictor for larger weight when the child is older,” Prof Rissel said.
Dr Helen Vidgen of the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre said weight loss programs needed to be routinely available to children.
“It’s a health indicator like hearing or vision,” she said.
“If you had anything abnormal in either of those there are clear pathways for treatment but not with weight.”
Blacktown’s Dion King, 8, was enrolled in Go4Fun by her mum Jasmine, 33, who learnt about portion sizes, healthy lunch boxes and daily exercise.
“If I had this knowledge when I was a child it probably would have helped a lot,’’ Jasmine said.
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