During the corona pandemic, the everyday life of many children has changed significantly. Little exercise and more time on the phone or in front of the television have a major impact on body weight. Every sixth child has gained weight significantly. An expert speaks of an alarming development.
More weight, less exercise, more sweets: According to the parents, the corona crisis has led to a significant increase in weight in many children. At 16 percent, every sixth child has become fatter since the beginning of the pandemic, and in the case of ten to twelve-year-olds, this even affects almost a third at 32 percent, according to a survey for the German Obesity Society (DAG) and the Else Kröner-Fresenius Center for Nutritional Medicine ( EKFZ) at the Technical University (TU) Munich.
For the study, the opinion research institute Forsa interviewed 1,004 parents with children between the ages of three and 17 in March and April of this year. Around 44 percent of children and young people move less than before, and among ten to twelve year olds it is even significantly more than half at 57 percent. 27 percent reach for sweets more often. Media use has also increased for 70 percent of minors. As a result, physical fitness deteriorated in every third child or 33 percent.
According to the survey, the pandemic is exacerbating health inequalities. Children and young people from low-income families are twice as likely to be affected by unhealthy weight gain as their peers from high-income families. The DAG and the EKFZ are therefore calling for a “Marshall Plan for Child Health”. As immediate measures, the experts recommend taxing sugar drinks, advertising barriers for unhealthy foods and strengthening obesity therapy, which is chronically underfunded in Germany.
“The consequences of the pandemic must be absorbed, otherwise the ‘Coronakilos’ will boomerang for the health of an entire generation,” warned nutritionist Hans Hauner from the Technical University of Munich. Obesity expert Susann Weihrauch-Blüher also called the survey results “alarming”. Obesity can lead to high blood pressure, fatty liver or diabetes in children and adolescents. “We have never seen weight gain on the scale seen since the beginning of the pandemic,” said the doctor.
Even before Corona, 15 percent of children and adolescents were overweight, and six percent were even severely overweight. Current and nationwide representative data on the body weight of children and adolescents are not available. The last survey by the Robert Koch Institute dates from 2014 to 2017. The DAG survey therefore confirms regional surveys and surveys, according to which more children and young people are affected by overweight than ever before.
