There are estimated to be more than 25,000 overweight children in Gloucestershire as obesity levels surge during the pandemic.
Obesity is a serious threat to the health, wellbeing and life chances of young people.
But the response to the coronavirus pandemic has proven to be a major setback to the efforts in tackling the problem.
Public health officers say there are hundreds of more obese children in the county since last year and they believe the pandemic has been the main driver for the increase.
The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) provides high-quality data on the prevalence of childhood obesity in England.
This measures the height and weight of children in reception (aged 4 to 5) and year six (aged 10 to 11) in state schools across the country every year.
And public health officials say they saw an unprecedented increase last year.
In Gloucestershire, the prevalence of severe obesity in children in reception year has almost doubled from 2.3 per cent in 2018/2019 to 4.2 per cent and the prevalence of obesity has risen to 13.5 per cent from 9.1 per cent during the same period.
The rate of obesity in year six children has risen from 21.1 per cent to 18.2 per cent while severe obesity is also up from four per cent to five per cent.
In Gloucestershire, this is an increase from 592 to 884 children in reception with obesity from 2018/19 to 2020/21. Of the 884 children, around 260 have severe obesity.
Public health officers say further modelling is needed to estimate the number of children with obesity across all year groups.
“Meanwhile, extrapolating reception and year six data a very conservative estimate of the total burden of obesity (including severe obesity) among children in Gloucestershire is upwards of 25,000 children,” a report by public health director Sarah Scott reads.
“This estimate does not take into account the increase childhood obesity rates with age.
“These data clearly demonstrate a concerning increase in levels of obesity among primary school children in Gloucestershire.
“Given this unprecedented increase since NCMP records began in 2006/07 we can infer that factors related to the Covid-19 pandemic have been the main driver for this increase.”
The report also says childhood obesity is a health inequalities issue and the association between poverty and obesity is apparent nationally and locally.
The proportion of reception children with obesity in Gloucestershire’s poorest neighbourhoods is one and a half times the proportion affected in the most affluent parts of the county.
The gap between obesity prevalence in our most and least deprived areas has increased from 4.1 per cent in 2014/15 to 5.3 per cent in 2020/21.
The report also highlights the differences in obesity prevalence between genders.
The council’s 2020/21 estimates for year six suggest that 23.5 per cent of boys had obesity, compared to 15.4 per cent of girls.
Levels of childhood obesity among reception age children in 2020/21 were the highest since the NCMP began across all Gloucestershire districts.
Obesity rates in Gloucester City (15.6 per cent), Tewkesbury (14.5 per cent) and the Forest of Dean (14.3 per cent) are similar or higher than the England average of 14.4 per cent.
