'Fat toddlers' being sent to weight loss classes

The classes will include activities to make youngsters familiar with healthy foods. Photo / iStock.

Toddlers in Britain are being referred to weekly weight-loss classes to curb rising obesity levels.

GPs and health visitors are being urged to send obese youngsters to the sessions as soon as they can walk, typically from 18 months.

They will be given fruit and raw vegetables to develop their tastebuds, and will go with their parents who will learn the importance of limiting portion sizes and eating healthy foods.

The initiative has been developed by doctors at University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital to tackle the causes of obesity from a very early age.

Sessions will first take place in London, Kent and Norfolk, but the scheme is expected to be rolled out elsewhere in the country over the next few months.

As many as a fifth of children are obese by the time they are 11. The UK's rates are among the worst in Europe and appear to be getting worse.

Recently the head of the NHS, Simon Stevens, warned that parents were partly to blame for the crisis by instilling their inactive lifestyles and sugar-laden diets on youngsters.

The scheme will target children from 18 months to four years old and will run in Westminster, Hammersmith and Kensington in London, as well as Medway in Kent and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Children will be referred by family doctors or health visitors if they are already very overweight or deemed to be at risk because their parents are obese.

The classes will include activities to make youngsters familiar with healthy foods, including relay races where they are given coloured bean bags which represent different fruits.

The games are designed to be played at home even if only during advert breaks between TV programmes. Experts said the need for the sessions represented the scale of the obesity problem.

Dr Matthew Capehorn, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, said the scheme was welcome, but only if followed through with good habits at home.

"We know that one in four children are at an unhealthy weight by the time that they start reception year and that as early as age two or three their eating patterns can be starting to form patterns of unhealthy eating," he added.

The classes will be run by a private company, Mytime Active, which is being paid by local NHS trusts called Clinical Commissioning Groups.

The Government has been criticised for failing to address the obesity crisis. Its key policy relies on the food and drinks industry being allowed to set its own rules on making products healthier.

- Daily Mail