NHS data for England in 2023/24 show obesity prevalence is rising and most notably the increase in prevalence between Reception and Year 6 children. Findings include:
- Obesity in Reception children increased from 9.2% in 2022/23 to 9.6% in 2023/24
- Obesity prevalence in Year 6 (22.1%) was more than twice as high as in Reception (9.6%)
- Severe obesity prevalence in Year 6 (5.5%) was more than twice as high as in Reception (2.6%).
For children living in the most deprived areas, obesity rates are over twice as high compared with those living in the least deprived areas:
- The prevalence of obesity was over twice as high among Reception children living in the most deprived areas (12.9%) as among Reception children living in the least deprived areas (6.0%).
- Severe obesity was almost four times as high among Reception children living in the most deprived areas (4.1%) as among Reception children living in the least deprived areas (1.1%).
- The prevalence of obesity was over twice as high among Year 6 children living in the most deprived areas (29.2%) as among Year 6 children living in the least deprived areas (13.0%).
- The prevalence of severe obesity was over four times as high for Year 6 children in the most deprived areas as in the least deprived areas (9.0% and 2.2% respectively).
RCPCH Officer for Health Improvement, Dr Helen Stewart, said:
It’s impossible to ignore that poorer children are over twice as likely to be obese than their richer peers. This is a long-standing health inequality that successive Governments have failed to tackle. It is clear to paediatricians that progress on childhood obesity cannot be achieved without also addressing our out-of-control rates of childhood poverty and deprivation.
Today we are calling on our government to publish the new child poverty strategy, with a clear focus on role of health, to expand free school meals and to finally commit to scrapping the two-child limit to benefit payments – which we know is keeping over a million children in poverty and entrenching health inequalities.
Some positive steps have already been taken in extending the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) to include sweetened milk drinks. The SDIL was a crucial step in the battle against child obesity. However, we need government to go further by extending similar mandatory regulation to a wider range of food and drink high in salt and sugar.