Preventing and Managing Childhood Obesity



This morning, I am presenting a plenary talk in Berlin to about 200 colleagues involved in childhood obesity prevention.

The 1-day symposium is hosted by Plattform Ernährung und Bewegung  e.V. (Platform for Nutrition and Physical Activity), a German consortium of health professionals as well as public and private stakeholders in public health.

Although, as readers are well aware, I am by no means an expert on childhood obesity, I do believe that what we have learnt about the complex socio-psycho-biology of adult obesity in many ways has important relevance for the prevention and management of childhood obesity.

Not only do important biological factors (e.g. genetics and epigenetics) act on the infant, but, infants and young children are exposed to the very same societal, emotional, and biological factors that promote and sustain adult obesity.

Thus, children do not grow up in isolation from their parents (or the adult environment), nor do other biological rules apply to their physiology.

It should thus be obvious, that any approach focussing on children without impacting or changing the adult environment will have little impact on over all obesity.

This has now been well appreciated in the management of childhood obesity, where most programs now take a “whole-family” approach to addressing the determinants of excess weight gain. In fact, some programs go as far as to focus exclusively on helping parents manage their own weights in the expectation (and there is some data to support this) that this will be the most effective way to prevent obesity in their offspring.

As important as the focus on childhood obesity may be, I would be amiss in not reminding the audience that the overwhelming proportion of adults living with obesity, were normal weight (even skinny!) kids and did not begin gaining excess weight till much later in life. Thus, even if we were somehow (magically?) to completely prevent and abolish childhood obesity, it is not at all clear that this would have a significant impact on reducing the number of adults living with obesity, at least not in the foreseeable future.

Let us also remember that treating childhood obesity is by no means any easier than managing obesity in adults – indeed, one may argue that effectively treating obesity in kids may be even more difficult, given the the most effective tools to managing this chronic disease (e.g. medications, surgery) are not available to those of us involved in pediatric obesity management.

Thus, I certainly do not envy my pediatric colleagues in their struggles to provide meaningful obesity management to their young clients.

I am not sure how my somewhat sobering talk will be received by this public health audience, but then again, I don’t think I was expected to fully toe the line when it comes to exclusively focussing on nutrition and activity (as important as these factors may be) as an effective way to prevent or even manage childhood obesity.

@DrSharma
Berlin, D