Childhood obesity: tracking the influencing factors

Abstract

Overweight and obesity in children and adolescents pose major public health challenges. About one in six children in Germany is overweight or obese. Among 11- to 13-year-olds, the figure rises as high as one in five. Obesity can have negative consequences for the health of children that can continue into adulthood. Childhood obesity is caused by a variety of individual and environmental factors that cannot be reduced to individual dietary behaviours and physical activity. As such, providing healthy food in day-care centres can contribute as much to obesity prevention as the presence of spaces for sport in the local environment and parents acting as role models. The AdiMon Indicator System answers questions such as ‘How many children drink sugar-sweetened beverages every day?’, ‘How are patterns of food consumption changing?’ and ‘How many children are affected by poverty?’ The information provided to these and many other questions enables the need for action to be recognised at an early stage and to track developments over time. This information can and should be used by healthcare professionals to plan preventive measures and to monitor current developments. This brochure provides a selection of important, revealing population-wide figures from the AdiMon Indicator System. The complete indicator system, which provides far more background information on the factors that influence childhood obesity, is available at www.rki.de/adimon.