{"id":758486,"date":"2026-09-03T06:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/758486\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T06:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:56:08","slug":"the-overlooked-factor-driving-the-childhood-obesity-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/758486\/","title":{"rendered":"The overlooked factor driving the childhood obesity crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There has been no extensive research in Britain on why school absence might be causing obesity, but doctors who have spoken to the BBC have their theories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One factor is diet. Since the 2000s &#8211; when all four UK governments passed laws to make school lunches healthier &#8211; it&#8217;s become much harder to find high-sugar or high-fat foods in most canteens. At home, those restrictions don&#8217;t apply. By 2010, a few years after the new laws were introduced, a study from the University of Leeds found that only 1.1% of home-packed lunches met the nutritional requirements that would apply to a meal bought by a child at school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And a US study from earlier this year found that child obesity rose in states where a universal free school meal programme was withdrawn in 2022 (presumably because it prompted children to eat unhealthy food at home).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;While school food is not as good as it should be, there are some regulations around it,&#8221; says Keith Godfrey, an epidemiology professor at the University of Southampton. &#8220;Whereas in the home environment, it&#8217;s much more variable in terms of what children receive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Exercise also matters. A British study from 2014 looked at step counts measured with electronic sensors, and found that most children are more active on school days than weekends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has been no extensive research in Britain on why school absence might be causing obesity, but doctors&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-758486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}