Rishard Khan

Re­porter

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Pae­di­atric So­ci­ety of T&T (PSTT) is alarmed at the in­creased num­bers of over­weight and obese chil­dren pre­sent­ing to hos­pi­tals and pri­vate clin­ics in T&T.

It not­ed that the in­ci­dence of the dis­ease has re­sult­ed in an in­crease in as­so­ci­at­ed con­di­tions in chil­dren.

“Our mem­bers have been not­ing with grow­ing alarm the in­creased num­bers of over­weight and obese chil­dren pre­sent­ing to our hos­pi­tal and pri­vate clin­ics. There has al­so been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in child­hood type 2 di­a­betes and oth­er co-mor­bidi­ties tra­di­tion­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the adult pop­u­la­tion. Not on­ly are these chil­dren ex­pe­ri­enc­ing more ill-health, but these chil­dren will be­come adults with high rates of NCDs who are more prone to de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety, and poor im­mune sys­tems,” the so­ci­ety said in a state­ment.

“In 2020 Pro­fes­sor Teelucks­ingh et al, found that Trinidad and To­ba­go ranked fifth in the Caribbean. The WHO re­cent­ly pub­lished that we rank eighth world­wide with an obe­si­ty rate of 14 per cent in those less than five years old.

“This trans­lates in­to a four-fold in­crease in child­hood obe­si­ty rates over the last two decades. This is an alarm­ing rate of in­crease and if we do not in­ter­vene now the sit­u­a­tion will on­ly wors­en,” the so­ci­ety said.

The so­ci­ety be­lieves this in­creased num­ber of over­weight chil­dren is a di­rect re­sult of a change in lifestyle such as re­duced phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­creased screen time and un­healthy and un­bal­anced di­ets.

Ac­cord­ing to the so­ci­ety, “Fam­i­lies spend less time at home with in­creased hours in traf­fic, par­ents work­ing longer hours and chil­dren spend­ing more hours in lessons. Many schools have al­so re­moved phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion from their timeta­bles as chil­dren ap­proach ex­am­i­na­tion class­es to de­vote more hours to aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.

“Par­ents are of­ten left with few op­tions in terms of quick af­ford­able fast food to sus­tain their fam­i­lies. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these are the foods that are high in calo­ries, fat, salt and sug­ar, all in­gre­di­ents of an un­healthy, un­bal­anced di­et,” it added.

The ob­ser­va­tions came as the so­ci­ety ex­pressed its sup­port for the Min­istry of Health’s ef­forts to re­duce the in­ci­dence of the non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease (NCD) among the de­mo­graph­ic.

With di­et be­ing one of the crit­i­cal de­ter­mi­nants of child­hood obe­si­ty and as­so­ci­at­ed com­pli­ca­tions, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh met with the heads of fast food chains on June 26 to de­vise strate­gies to in­clude health­i­er op­tions on their menus and to re­duce salt and sug­ar con­tent.

Present at this meet­ing were Restau­rant Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, Glob­al Brands, Mario’s Pizze­ria Lim­it­ed, Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, Jen­ny’s on the Boule­vard, Pap­py’s Fried Chick­en, Chuck E Cheese, Arazzi and Salt n’ Pep­per Clas­si­cal In­di­an Cui­sine.

Based on a re­lease then, the fast food heads are ex­pect­ed to meet once again with Deyals­ingh in a month to out­line rec­om­men­da­tions for health­i­er op­tions on their menus.

The min­is­ter’s meet­ing came on the heels of his call to glob­al lead­ers to ad­dress fast food’s con­tri­bu­tion to NCDs, es­pe­cial­ly in chil­dren, dur­ing the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s World Health As­sem­bly in Gene­va a month pri­or.

“The mem­bers of the PSTT there­fore sup­port all mea­sures to ar­rest this trend na­tion­al­ly. We con­grat­u­late and sup­port the min­is­ter’s on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the heads of the fast food chains and restau­rants and the bev­er­age in­dus­try in find­ing strate­gies to make their of­fer­ings to the pub­lic more bal­anced,” the PSTT’s state­ment said.

In ad­di­tion to health­i­er fast-food op­tions, the so­ci­ety said on­go­ing and ro­bust pub­lic dis­cus­sion and ed­u­ca­tion about obe­si­ty and NCD re­duc­tion was nec­es­sary.

It al­so ex­pressed sup­port for all strate­gies that en­cour­age more child­hood phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and out­door play, “start­ing with re­turn­ing phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion to all class­es in our schools and mak­ing safe out­door spaces avail­able in com­mu­ni­ties”.