[ad_1]
Poor access to nutritious food for UK schoolchildren and teenagers is the reason they have fallen behind in healthy development compared to their counterparts in other affluent nations, public health experts said.
A global analysis of the height and weight records of children between the ages of 5 and 19 found that the UK’s position slipped between 1985 and 2019, with 19-year-old men from 28 to 39 plus. tall and women from 42nd to 49th.
The study, based on data from 65 million children in 193 countries, revealed a 20 cm difference between taller and smaller nations, driven by stark differences in infant nutrition and living conditions, the researchers report.
“The results indicate that countries vary enormously in their ability to support their children and adolescents to become a healthy and prosperous generation,” said Majid Ezzati, professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London.
“In many countries, the potential of children for healthy growth during school age is not met, even in many of the countries where children appear to grow healthily up to five years of age,” he added.
The analysis, published in the Lancet, shows that the Netherlands is the tallest nation with 19-year-old men and women averaging 183.8cm and 170.4cm respectively. In Bangladesh, one of the lowest nations, 19-year-old men and women reached only 165.1cm and 152.4cm respectively.
Although boys and girls are taller in the UK than they once were, they haven’t kept up with the growth of children in other wealthy countries. From 1985 to 2019, UK teenagers fell in global rankings, despite men reaching 178.2cm and women 163.9cm, from 176.3cm and 162.7cm in 1985.
“The UK, especially compared to high-income countries by comparison, is not doing well in the healthy growth of school-age children and adolescents,” Ezzati said. “With high levels of child poverty in the country, a large percentage of children are not growing healthily, which is reflected in the national number.”
Northwestern and Central European nations, such as the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland, were 19-year-olds tallest, with the lowest mainly in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and East Africa, including Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala and Bangladesh. The greatest improvements in height were seen in emerging economies such as China and South Korea. In China, 19-year-olds were 8cm taller in 2019 than in 1985.
Inequalities in access to healthy food have long been in the background, Ezzati said, but have come to the fore in a more extreme way in the pandemic. Andrea Rodriguez Martinez, the study’s lead author, said the findings underscore the importance of making nutritious food more available, through free and healthy food stamps and school meals, particularly during the pandemic, which affects the most vulnerable. harder. “This problem is particularly important during the Covid-19 pandemic, when schools are closed around the world and many poor families are unable to provide adequate nutrition for their children,” Ezzati said.
Source link
