National Childhood Obesity Week

As if you didn't have reason enough already to see the benefits of trampolining for both children and adults alike, this week is also National Childhood Obesity week, a campaign put together and run by the British Heart Foundation, the National Obesity Forum and MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it!)

The campaign is sponsored and supported by Netmums, an excellent online resource for families containing lots and lots of information for parents and children.

With so much talk about obesity rates in the media it is very easy to gloss over the stats without realising how shocking they are.

One in three of our Year 6 children are overweight or obese

One in five of our school starters are overweight or obese

It's estimated that by 2050 60% of adult males and 50% of adult females will be obese costing the country £50 billion

You can read more on the Netmums site about their sponsorship.

Information from MEND about the week and how you can get involved..

'With an estimated three million overweight and obese children in the UK, childhood obesity is one of the most serious health epidemics facing our society today. Not only is this crisis damaging our children’s health and quality of life, it also has huge financial implications for the NHS.

To raise awareness about this epidemic, MEND and the National Obesity Forum have joined forces to launch National Childhood Obesity Week.

During the Week, MEND and the National Obesity Forum will launch the Action on Childhood Obesity Charter which calls on the new Coalition Government to announce its strategy for tackling the childhood obesity crisis. We hope the new government will use the Week to pledge its commitment to tackling this important issue and set out its short and long-term vision for reducing childhood obesity levels. To view the Charter and the organisations that have signed it please click here.
Throughout National Childhood Obesity Week, MEND will launch its first-ever MEND Move It Week in a bid to encourage more children and their families to get active together. To celebrate MEND Move It Week, families across the UK will be ‘moving it’ at fun-filled physical activity events organised by MEND’s network of 350 healthy lifestyle programmes. To find out more about MEND Move It Week, go to www.mendcentral.org/moveitweek'

We would like to lend our support to the campaign, and if you take a look at our blog yesterday on why trampolines are good for children you can see the health benefits of trampolining, not just for children but their parents too!