A British survey shows that even slim children as young as 8 years are on slimming diets!

A British survey has revealed something very shocking. Children as young as eight years old are into dieting in the UK.

And even those who have normal weight for age and height are eating slimming diets. This is not a healthy sign and requires a quick address.

British survey and the shocking results

Dieting or diets to lose weight should be under medical supervision. But this is not the case. A British survey published in the reputed pediatric journal Archives of Disease in Childhood has shed light on this.

The survey included 34000 teenagers and children. It tried to find out the number of children on slimming diets. Almost 27% of the children admitted to consuming diets to slim themselves.

This was 21% in 1997, more than two decades back. Childhood obesity is increasing but not very rapidly.

The astonishing thing in this survey was that even slim children were on weight loss diets. 1 out of 7 slim children eats as per slimming diets in the UK.

The earlier and current proportions are as follows: In the overweight group, it was 9% before and now it is 39.3%. And in the obese group category, it was 32.9% earlier and the present proportion of children dieting is 62.6%.

Furthermore, in the slim group, earlier only 5.3% of children were dieting. This has risen to 13.6%, more than double the previous percentage. The dieting kids were older and mostly girls.

But the gender gap is rapidly coming down. Dietitian and author of the study Melissa Little from Oxford University opine:

“We have been seeing a rise in boys dieting – it’s not just girls doing it.”

“While some of the teenagers and children who are dieting are overweight, some are not.”

“We’ve really got to think about getting the right health messaging across.”

Worrying points

The craze for dieting rapidly rose in 2011. Very young children as young as 8 years of age were trying weight loss diets. And even children with normal weight for age and height were into slimming diets.

Moreover, the point of worry was that most of these slimming diets were arbitrary with no proper medical guidance. Dr. Paul Jenkins from the University of Reading School of Psychology is concerned and says:

“The apparent increase in the numbers of children expressing a desire to lose weight in those who could be considered to be at a ‘healthy’ weight for their age is particularly concerning.”

Probable reasons for this result

The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) started regular weighing of children in 2006. And in 2008, they started providing parents with this data.

Obesity was on the rise and reached 14% in 4 to 5-year-old kids. But in 2021 it dropped to 10%. Despite that dieting in these children has shown a steady rise.

Also, read Mindy Kaling and her weight loss journey! Did she do dieting?

Social media networking has brought to prominence the issue of body image. Often wrong messages are propagated through these platforms and parents are kept out of all this propaganda.

The unrealistically thin beauty model concept is catching up among teenagers and even more younger kids. The same platforms and easy internet access provide these children with unsupervised diet options.

They pick it up and apply it to themselves. But all this could be dangerous. This issue needs to be addressed properly and halted for a healthy future generation.