Childhood obesity, 120 million overweight children in 40 years

(ANSA) - SORRENTO, 21 MAY - In the last 40 years the number of children and adolescents with obesity has increased by more than ten times.

From 1975 to 2016, women went from 5 to 50 million and males from 6 to 74 million according to a 2020 Nature Metabolism study. In total, there are now around 120 million obese children and adolescents worldwide.

Gathered in Sorrento for the 77th Congress, pediatricians are once again raising the alarm on one of the "most relevant challenges for public health of our century".

In Italy, one of the European countries with the highest prevalence rate of childhood obesity, preceded only by Cyprus, Spain and Greece, children with obesity are 9.4% of the total and those overweight about 20%.

The pandemic has only worsened the situation, without sport and with a greater consumption of caloric foods.

    "Obesity - explains the President of the Italian Society of Pediatrics, Annamaria Staiano - is a precursor model of chronic diseases that the NHS must face in later life. We need to invest in the prevention of this social emergency and complications. Related diseases are also on the rise. , including diabetes 2, which is growing among children and paradoxically in the past was called adult diabetes ".

Healthy nutrition, physical activity, and healthy sleep are useful strategies.

In particular, the focus is on the Mediterranean diet recognized as a UNESCO heritage.

"We have a heritage, we try to use it - adds Staiano - we urge mothers to use products that are as refined as possible: we return to a diet of the past, healthy, rich in cereals, complex carbohydrates,

that give satiety to the child, without resorting to products with an enormous quantity of simple sugars, such as fruit juices, sugary drinks that favor the onset of obesity ". Then yes to fruit, vegetables, fish, white and rarely red meat, oil and limit the use, if possible avoid it, of canned food and preserved foods, because food additives and emulsifiers are being observed to contribute to chronic inflammation of tissues, risk factors for diabetes and inflammatory and chronic intestinal diseases ".

(HANDLE).