The global obesity epidemic
has caught up with even fitness-obsessed Sweden, with the number
of overweight Stockholm school children nearly tripling over
the past 14 years, according to a Stockholm county report.
The report, titled
"Stockholm Childhood Obesity Prevention Project", or STOPP,
is the first of a two-part project expected to conclude in 2005
aimed at finding ways of reducing overweight and obesity among
Swedish children.
"We want to see
if it's possible to stop the fat development," professor Claude
Marcus, the author of the report stated.
Sweden has traditionally
been among the world's healthiest nations.
"That is no longer
the case," Marcus said. "What we found here was really shocking."
Compared to a similar
study of about 4,000 children conducted 14 years ago, 23.7 percent
more Stockholm pupils are overweight today than in 1989.
Monday's report
also revealed that Stockholm school children exercise about
5 percent less today than they did just two years ago when the
project began, and that girls are getting less exercise than
their male classmates, Marcus said.
The first part of
the project was based on information compiled over the past
two years from about 2,000 children, ages six to 10, at 13 Stockholm
elementary schools.
The project team
changed the school lunch menues and the physical activity programs
at five of the schools in an attempt to create a healthier environment
for the children, while the remaining eight schools were used
as control groups.
"In Sweden, almost
everyone goes to both school and to after school recreation
centers," Marcus said. "The kids eat two meals a day in these
places. So there are better possibilities in Sweden than many
other places to actually affect the development."
Over the past two
years, the number of overweight children at the eight control
schools has increased by four percent, while the five project
schools have not seen any increase.
Marcus will present
the project findings at the European Congress on Obesity in
Prague in May.
Reference
Source 89
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