Martin Knight said that obesity was already costing the Island’s economy around £43 million annually and that figure was expected to rise to £57 million by 2025.
And although the Health Department must take the lead in trying to reduce the number of young people who are overweight in the Island, he says, more must be done to look at the family unit as a whole and teach parents how they can become educators.
This week the Child Measurement Report for 2016/2017 showed that one in five four-to-five-year-olds are overweight or obese and one in three ten-to-11-year-olds are overweight or obese.
The report shows that the prevalence of obesity in four-to-five-year-olds has remained relatively constant since 2000, and the prevalence of obese ten-to-11-year-olds has remained constant since figures were first recorded for the age group in 2011.
And according to the report there was a big difference between the number of children who are classed as overweight or obese living in urban areas compared to those living in rural ones.
Figures show that ten per cent of ten-to-11-year-olds living in rural parishes are overweight compared to 21 per cent living in urban areas and 20 per cent living in semi-urban areas such as St Brelade and St Saviour.
The proportion of overweight four-to-five-year-olds was not statistically different when broken down by parish area.
In July the Health Department launched the Food and Nutrition Strategy for Jersey 2017–2022, which outlines a number of action points aimed at helping to reduce the number of young people in Jersey who are classed as overweight.
Mr Knight said: ‘We launched the strategy in July and I think we should soon start to see really strong improvements in key evidence-based programmes, that will reduce the number of people who are overweight. ‘If we can invest early and work with families at an earlier stage, then we hope to reduce unhealthy behaviours.
‘We need to take away this idea that obesity and people being overweight is only down to simplistic health choices.’
Introducing a sugar tax, moving fast-food outlets away from schools and launching a Unicef initiative which supports breastfeeding parents – as breastfeeding is linked to reduced levels of child obesity – are all points included in the strategy.
Mr Knight said: ‘The number of obese and overweight people is not going down because we are not doing enough.
‘The States should take responsibility and be seen to be leading this change but there is a shared voice and everyone should be trying to make a difference.
‘This is about looking at the community as a whole and sharing the responsibility.
‘I’m looking forward to 2018, when we will start to see some changes when programmes noted in the Food and Nutrition Strategy kick off.’
