The data is terrifying:
32.5% of children between the ages of four and 16 who live in low-income households are overweight or obese
, a percentage that stands at 19% in families with high income, according to the new report
'Goodbye to the Mediterranean diet'
, from Save the Children.
These are some of the results that emerge from an investigation that this organization carried out, in September 2021, with
more than 2,000 fathers and mothers
with the aim of analyzing the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on nutrition and health of Spanish children.
This is a comparative analysis with the National Health Survey of Spain (ENSE), carried out in 2017.
No doubt.
As revealed in 'Goodbye to the Mediterranean diet',
living in a low-income household triggers the probability of being obese or overweight in childhood
.
The reason?
Families with
lower incomes
are
less likely to have access to the right foods for a balanced diet
than households with higher incomes.
A situation that, unfortunately, is being
aggravated by the increase in prices of vegetables and fruits
as a result of recent inflation.
"We cannot forget that
the poorest neighborhoods tend to concentrate a greater number of restaurants and fast food establishments
", indicates the general director of Save the Children, Andrés Conde.
To a diet overloaded with pasta, processed foods and industrial pastries, another key factor should be added, in addition to
rest or the consumption of 'screens
', which is the
lack of physical activity
, which, as explained in this report, is also It lives in the most disadvantaged households since it is also
more difficult for these families to pay for extracurricular or non-sedentary leisure activities
or treat health problems such as eating behavior disorders or oral pathologies, closely related to inadequate eating patterns.
SWEETS DAILY
The survey leaves no room for doubt about the influence between purchasing power and eating habits:
18.1% of children from households with lower incomes consume sweets daily,
compared
to 10% of children from well-off families .
In addition,
more than 71% of high-income households practice physical activities or sports regularly, but only 41% of low-income households do so
.
In most cases, these children from poor households do not engage in physical activity at all or only occasionally.
This inequality is given time by observing the time they spend on screens.
The vast majority of children who spent no more than one hour a day in front of a screen in 2021 lived in high-income households (79.6%).
In contrast, almost half (46.3%) of children who spend more than five hours a day in front of a screen (well above the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization of 2 hours a day) live in homes low
income
.
Although the pandemic has led to a
reduction in the hours of sleep among children and adolescents of 27 minutes
, the rest patterns also depend on the socioeconomic level of the families.
Thus, 28% of children living in high-income households sleep more than
10 hours a day
, as recommended by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, while only 9% of children in low-income households sleep those hours.
All these data explain the reason why
Spain,
along with Cyprus and Italy,
leads the European ranking of childhood obesity
.
In the European Union, on average, about one in eight children between the ages of seven and eight suffers from obesity.
In Spain, it is almost one in five (18%)
INFLUENCE OF THE CORONAVIRUS
In total, according to the study, almost
28.1% of these minors would be overweight and obese in Spain after Covid-19
.
Therefore, the situation after the pandemic is very similar to the previous one.
However, "we must take these numbers with caution, because changes in the Body Mass Index, which is the most common measure of obesity and overweight, take time," warns Conde.
The confinement had a negative and positive impact at the same time: "It must be taken into account that, with the closure of schools,
physical exercise and leisure activities were reduced
, but at the same time it brought children and adolescents to
eat more often at home
, a factor linked to a good healthy habit", says Conde.
What is already known is that the pandemic has affected the reduction in the consumption of vegetables and, especially, fruit.
If in 2017 more than half of the boys and girls between the ages of four and 14 consumed fruit daily (56%), at the time of the survey this value fell to 40%.
One of the few positive data, on the other hand, is that "
the consumption of sweets was reduced by almost 70% and that of caloric drinks by almost half
. However, it is possible that this effect is circumstantial and due only to the mobility restrictions and the closure of shops and leisure spaces where you can buy and consume this type of product", clarifies the director general of Save the Children.
SCHOOL DINING ROOMS
As revealed during the presentation of the study, quality school canteens guarantee healthy food, but
not all families can afford them
.
Canteen
scholarships
could democratize access to this service, but they are not offered to all children who need them, nor, if they are obtained, do they always cover the full cost.
"Depending on the autonomous community and the level of family income, these aids cover a percentage of the price of the dining room, which can vary between 10 and 100% of the cost, although complete aid is the least common", details Catalina Perazzo, Director of Social and Political Advocacy at Save the Children.
With a percentage of
27.4% of boys and girls in a situation of poverty
, according to the National Institute of Statistics,
only 11.2 percent of the students receive a dining room scholarship.
Among the autonomous communities, the inequality is palpable, since Euskadi offers full coverage above its poverty rate;
while Murcia, Melilla, the Balearic Islands and Cantabria barely reach 5% of these children.
INVOLVEMENT OF THE AUTHORITIES
Faced with such a discouraging scenario, Save the Children includes in its report a series of
recommendations and good practices
to reverse the percentages of children and adolescents who suffer from childhood obesity and overweight.
Among them, he highlights measures, such as, for example,
applying stricter taxation to foods that are harmful to health
and more beneficial to healthy eating.
At the health level, they recommend regulating the
figure of the dietitian
and promoting the creation of multidisciplinary teams to achieve healthy eating habits and lifestyles that have an impact on better quality of life for all children.
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