Childhood obesity rates have levelled off since 2002

Ireland’s surging childhood obesity rates have reportedly ground to a halt since 2008, while adult levels have almost halved.

However, experts cannot say for definite if the drop was due to dietary cutbacks during the economic crisis.

Findings to be published in the open-access online journal BMC Public Health today show that, despite a threefold increase in childhood obesity rates from the 1970s to the early 2000s, between 2002 and 2012 the rates levelled off.

Specifically, over the 10-year period, childhood overweight and obesity levels remained static at 25%-37%, despite predictions that they would rise, while adult levels fell from 7% to 4%.

Although the issue continues to be a serious cause of concern, with one in four children being overweight or obese and one in 50 being morbidly obese, the study’s authors said there has been a clear drop-off in the problem since 2008.

However, the team behind the joint UCC and UCD research denied suggestions that the issue may be linked to families being forced to cut junk food out of adult and children’s diets to save money during the recession.

“We don’t have information on that from this particular piece of research; we can’t say for definite but we do know that it started to level off in 2008,” said study co-author and UCC lecturer in public health nutrition Janas Harrington.

“The World Health Organisation is looking at the causes for these trends at the moment through COSI [the Child Obesity Surveillance Initiative]. That’s looking at Ireland among eight European countries through a cross-section of children aged seven to nine years.

“This isn’t an issue that’s fixed easily overnight.”

Lead author of the study Eimear Keane, a PhD student with UCC’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, said that while research suggests prevalence rates of childhood obesity in Ireland have levelled off, one in four children remain overweight or obese.

“Obesity continues to have a significant impact on health and wellbeing, therefore policies that tackle the problem should be intensified,” she said.

The study would appear to contradict recent concerns raised by a number of obesity experts, who said Irish society is getting chubbier year-on-year.

At a summer Irish Heart Foundation conference, consultant endocrinologist Francis Finucane said 80,000 Irish people are morbidly obese, while separate research suggested 26.5% of Irish girls and 16% of Irish boys under the age of 20 are overweight or obese.

The Departments of Health and Education have pushed a number of policies to aggressively tackle obesity levels in Ireland.

They include discussing whether to ban vending machines in schools, adding calorie counts to menus, and sugar tax initiatives.