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Children as young as ten months old have been admitted to hospital because they are dangerously overweight, an investigation has revealed.Over the past three years, at least 932 children under the age of 15 have needed urgent medical attention as a consequence of Britain’s obesity epidemic.
However the true scale of the problem is likely to be much higher, as less than a third of hospital trusts have released information about the number of young children whose weight has spiralled out of control.
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has revealed that during the past year, doctors found themselves having to treat a ten-month-old baby for obesity – and a one year old was referred to Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust as a result of her weight.
Several overweight two-year-olds, at least 101 children under the age of five and a further 283 children of primary school age were also diagnosed with obesity, according to hospital admission data obtained by the Sunday Times.
Tam Fry, a National Obesity Forum member and chairman of charity the Child Growth Foundation, said the findings should provide Britain with a wake-up call.
He said: ‘Unless we tackle bad lifestyle and bad diet then we will never get to grips with the obesity epidemic.
‘We should ask ourselves why babies born at healthy weight get so fat that they are admitted to hospital at ten months.
‘If the parents sit around and eat the wrong food, then what chance do their children have.’
He added: ‘This is a total failure of the NHS to do its job properly, which is to regularly monitor children of a young age to ensure they are healthy.
‘Better monitoring and early intervention would help prevent this issue.’
The second highest number of admissions for obese children are at Great Ormond Street in London
A separate investigation also found that some foods that are aimed at babies and toddlers have alarming amounts of sugar. Products that have more than 22.5g of sugar per 100g often appear as red in colour-coded nutrition labels.
But one snack, Organix Goodies Strawberry and Apple Fruit Gummies, has almost 70g of natural fruit sugar per 100g.
Over the last three years, 932 children under the age of 15 were admitted to hospital for obesity
The firm admitted that the products have a high natural sugar content because they contain fruit purees and concentrates, but said they do not contain any refined sugar.
As well as the Organix range, Heinz fruit with yoghurt cereal – which is aimed at babies over four months – contains 27.6g of sugar per 100g, some of which has been added.
A company spokesman said they try to keep the amount of sugar in their products to a minimum, but the investigation also found the brand’s organic biscotti contains 28g of sugar per 100g.
Childhood obesity is now thought to cost the NHS around £4.2billion every year, according to estimates put forward by the Royal College of Paediatrics.
In Britain at the moment, one in three children aged between two and ten years old is overweight, according to the National Child Measurement Programme.
And over the past decade, the UK has seen a four-fold rise in youngsters needing medical attention as a consequence of being obese.
NHS admission figures, released earlier this year, show that the number of overweight children admitted to hospital rose from 872 in 2000 to 3,806 in 2009.
The statistics also show that between 2000 and 2009, a total of nearly 21,000 patients aged between five and 19 were treated for obesity-related conditions such as asthma and type 2 diabetes.
A Department of Health spokesman said: 'The rate of childhood obesity has remained stable for the past few years but is still deeply worrying.
'People who are obese in childhood are more likely to carry that weight into adulthood — leaving them at risk of a lifetime of serious health problems.
'We are taking the lead in tackling obesity through our Responsibility Deal with industry and through Change4Life we are targeting more and more children and families with information on how to eat well, move more and live longer.
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