Child obesity rates have seen a slight decline in most New Zealand communities but the country still has the third most obese population in the OECD, behind the US and Mexico, new research from the University of Otago has found.
Researcher Barry Taylor joined TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning to discuss the university's findings.
Research published by the university six months ago found that obesity rates were "slowly dropping across all our groups", which included "Māori, Pacific, non-Māori, non-Pacific and low socioeconomic groups".
Their most recent paper, which looked at changes among the different communities across 65 territorial authorities and all the wards in Auckland, found that obesity rates saw "a fairly even change right across the country".
He said it "suggests that it's actually the big, global, environmental things that are having an effect, so whether it's TV advertising or TV programmes or Government policy".
"It seems like trying to change our environment is what is working, rather than the local efforts in each individual community," he added.
However, Mr Taylor said he couldn't confidently say obesity rates were trending downwards.
"In New Zealand, we have this 'before school' check – the free check at four years old where we get our height and weight and we can do this work – but we don't have anything at 11 years of age, which will enable us to say whether [obesity] is happening in another age group," he explained.
"Obesity rates may still be going up in 11-year-olds, and possibly also in the adult population, so 60% of adults are overweight or obese. So the majority of our population is actually not a healthy weight, but it’s reassuring to me that perhaps our most vulnerable population – the younger population – we're starting to see what might be a decrease.
"The challenge is, what's happening with our 11-year-olds? My concern is, I think the data suggests that we may still be going up there."
Mr Taylor said part of the challenge may be found in society's "enormous amount of normalising" of unhealthy weights.
"If you've got an obese four-year-old, 70% of parents don't think they’re obese," he said. "So there has been an enormous amount of normalising - suggesting that 'this is OK', 'they’ll grow out of it', 'don't worry about it'. But in actual fact, we've got good evidence that if you are obese as a young child, you’re much, much more likely to be obese as an adolescent and then as an adult.
"For the child concerned, we know they're not treated so well at school, they probably have disrupted sleep and that can disturb their learning and certainly, as adults, you have high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, which are much more common."
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