children do not acknowledge the problem,
according to the Health Survey for
England 2015. Nine in ten mothers and
eight in ten fathers of overweight children
said they thought their child was about the
right weight, as did almost half of mothers
(48%) and 43% of fathers of children who
were classed as obese. “It is possible that
consistently high levels of childhood
obesity in recent years have normalised an
unhealthy weight,” said Gillian Prior, head
of health at the National Centre for Social
Research. The survey found that, overall,
14% of children were overweight in 2015,
and a further 14% were obese; in 2014,
31% were either obese or overweight.
