Cost of living crisis could lead to more obese kids, warns Calderdale councillor

Children’s nutrition – and associated concerns about whether they are underweight or overweight – were among issues raised by Calderdale scrutiny councillors at a recent meeting.

Lead officer for transformation, Gez Roberts, said Calderdale Council’s public health teams were keeping an eye on the proportion of underweight children in the borough.

They were particularly vulnerable because of the cost of living crisis limiting their access to decent food, he said.

Coun Stuart Cairney (Lab, Ovenden) said he was concerned about the data relating to children’s weight and whether they were getting the right nutrition they needed.

He said he was worried a cycle might develop that if some children were eating low quality food which was cheaper, they were not getting the right nutrition.

Their bodies were then telling them they were still hungry, resulting them eating more of the less nutritious food, which could actually lead to some obesity problems.

Coun Abigail Carr (Lib Dem, Warley) asked if there was a mechanism for tracking the children’s progress between the two monitored age groups – Reception and Year 6.

Mr Roberts said children were assessed at the two age groups. Regarding care for an individual child between those two points and how diet was monitored, he would refer the issues raised back to the public health team.

In terms of monitoring children’s weight at the two age groups, the council has performed significantly higher than the national average – ranking 18th highest in the country.

Interim finance director Isabel Brittain said in her report: “We are committed to undertake more work to understand how the prevalence of children underweight (in the country) is reflected across Calderdale, and to consider the root causes of this.

“The current cost of living crisis being an obvious source, and this serving only to add focus to our work in this priority area to tackle poverty and inequality.”

Data presented to councillors indicated the area scoring highly for prevalence of healthy weight in Reception-age children, with improving performance.

It also scored highly for prevalence of healthy weight in children in Year 6, although performance was worsening.