It's not all child's play

摘要

There are few areas of food policy that provoke as much angst as the links between diet and children's health. At the end of April, research published in the International Journal of Obesity suggested that we face not one, but two obesity epidemics, with parents being the biggest influence on the habits of younger children, while adolescents' ability to make their own bad choices leads to a second wave of obesity among teens. And it's not just obesity that's raising the blood pressure of worried parents. March saw the publication of the latest Children's Dental Health (CDH) survey, which showed that in 2013, nearly half of 15 year-olds and a third of 12 year-olds had "obvious decay" in their permanent teeth.