news
Slim chance
Failure of anti-obesity program suggests
schools unlikely to win battle of the bulge.
A
year-long, UK-based anti-obesity school program has
failed to trim children’s waistlines.
A study published in medical journal The BMJ found
that the program, which involved increased physical activity,
a healthy eating plan and family nutrition workshops, had no
real effect on obese six and seven-year-old’s weight, body fat
proportions, or even diet or levels of exercise.
The testing was rigorous: 1400 children at 54 randomly
selected state-run primary schools in western central England
participated. The results, therefore, were equally strong, and
caused the researchers, led by Professor Peymané Adab at the
University of Birmingham’s Institute of Applied Health Research, to
extrapolate that school-based anti-obesity programs “are unlikely
to halt the childhood obesity epidemic”.
Accordingly, other influences, like the home, the community
and advertising, may be more effective focal points in tackling
childhood obesity.
Writing in an accompanying BMJ editorial, Professor Melissa
Wake, paediatrician and scientific director at the GenV initiative in
Victoria, noted the irony inherent in the study: that the program
was delivered in schools and this may have been its downfall.
“At least in the United States, children typically gain fitness
and lose fat during school terms, with virtually all increases in
overweight and obesity occurring over the summer holidays –
just when the programs cease to operate,” she said.
But Wake thinks the study’s ‘fail’ result is not necessarily a
bad thing. “Null trials can help to avoid putting into practice
interventions that are ineffective and to decommission those
already in place.” She acknowledged, however, that finding
effective childhood anti-obesity strategies is extraordinarily
difficult, given it is multifactorial. ■
educationreview.com.au | 7