Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer among men worldwide, with nearly 1.4 million new diagnoses each year. Links with obesity in adulthood are fairly well established with what appears to be a rise in risk with increasing body mass index. The link is significantly stronger for men than it is for women. Much…
Tag: Overweight
Get up, get out, get active!
Just what are the long term effects of being a couch potato as a youngster? New research using the 1970 British Cohort Study shows we may reap what we sow if we don’t switch off the television or the Playstation and get ourselves and our kids off the couch and active. Dr Mark Hamer from UCL…
Middle-aged couch potatoes ‘planted’ 30 years earlier
Parents should routinely switch off the TV and take young children out for a walk or some other exercise in order to increase their chances of growing up to be fit, healthy adults, new research suggests. And if it isn’t feasible to go outside, children could perhaps be encouraged to play interactive video games that…
What teenage girls eat
Teenage girls have the poorest diets of all according to the National Diet and Nutrition Survey with less than one in ten girls eating the recommended five-a-day fruit and vegetables. At an ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies Policy Seminar, researcher Laura Weston presents preliminary evidence from NatCen Social Research on adolescent girls’ nutrient intake and the…
Understanding ethnicity in the battle against obesity
One in five children in Reception class (age 4-5) at school is either overweight or obese according to the most recent figures from Public Health England. By the time they go into year 6 (age 10-11), the figure rises to one in three. Over time our children are becoming increasingly overweight and it’s a tide…
Poor and obese: why poorer adolescents are more likely to be overweight
What are the links between poverty and obesity? And are policy initiatives aimed at getting children to consume less fizzy drinks and sugary snacks enough to tackle the problem? Professor Amanda Sacker looks at the picture for 11 year-olds in our latest Child of our Time Research Talk recorded at a recent ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies…