Fighting fat

Obesity

The world’s populations are getting fatter. Unfortunately, New Zealand has not escaped the global epidemic, with more than half the adult population either overweight or obese (based on body mass index (BMI) statistics). But a new long-term study and programme in Waikato primary schools is having success where other strategies have failed.

Focus on children

In a recent letter to Science journal’s Science Translational Medicine, an international team of researchers, including New Zealand’s Liggins Institute Director Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, wrote that developed countries are struggling to control epidemics of obesity and related chronic diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, certain cancers, and liver and kidney damage). Now, developing countries are also seeing a rise in obesity with only very limited success using current strategies to deal with the problem. Current strategies used by health professionals include reducing smoking, reducing salt intake, promoting changes in food consumption, increasing physical activity and treating disease aggressively once it has developed.

However, the researchers argue that failure to curb the fat results in part from the focus of strategies on adult lifestyles. This ignores data that suggest that biological and cultural factors operating early in life affect adult health status. “To stem the rising obesity burden in developing countries, scientists and policy-makers must address obesity-promoting factors from early development to adulthood.” It seems that good lifestyle habits begin in the womb and can be built upon (or successfully changed for the better) as an individual progresses through childhood.

Waikato’s Project Energize

Project Energize, which has run in Waikato primary schools since 2005, came to the same conclusion as Professor Gluckman and his team. In a report published on 25 July 2011, this second team of researchers have found that children taking part in Project Energize are less likely to be overweight and obese than other children of the same age, have smaller waists and are able to run faster than comparison groups.

The Energize programme, funded by the Waikato District Health Board and the Healthy Eating Healthy Action strategy, aims to increase the quality and quantity of physical activity and to improve the food choices of Waikato primary school children, of whom 36% are Māori.

Obesity health problem

Lead author of the new report, Professor Elaine Rush (Professor of Nutrition at Auckland University of Technology), says that Project Energize “is a through-school initiative to improve nutrition and physical activity and reduce childhood obesity rates and cardiovascular risk factors in all primary schools in the Waikato DHB area of New Zealand.

“The programme, contracted to Sport Waikato since 2005, now includes 44,000 children, 244 schools, 27 ‘Energizers’ and one dietitian. Energizers are assigned 8–12 schools each and act as a ‘one-stop shop’ to support activities that promote and co-ordinate improved nutrition and physical activity within schools. The overall cost is less than $40 per child each year. A formal audit in 2008 showed that 92% of the money invested had a direct impact on the children.

“In March 2011, more than 5,000 7- and 10-year-old children had physical measurements taken [including height, weight, waist and time to run 550 metres]. These latest results, when compared with control data, showed that the prevalence of obesity and overweight was 3% less in both age groups. The 2011 Energize children also ran 550 metres 20 seconds faster compared to other New Zealand children measured between 2001 and 2007.”

Dr Robyn Toomath, an avid campaigner in the fight against obesity, says the programme has been successful in a large number of schools across a wide demographic, and the all-inclusive nature means that this is an initiative likely to reduce rather than increase disparity between ethnicities and those from differing socio-economic groups. (According to the report, Māori, Pacific peoples and people from lower socio-economic groups have worse health and die younger than other New Zealanders.)

“It is very encouraging to see how a modestly funded initiative can be cost-effective. All we need now is for a whole lot of things, each with a small impact, to happen at the same time. Things like the restoration of Mission On, banning of junk food ads on TV, increasing the price of soft drinks, lowering the fat content of standard chips, removing fast food outlets and dairies from beside schools and then we might just get there with childhood obesity.”