New nutritional management guidelines will be developed to help women attain a target macronutrient balance during pregnancy, as part of a partnership between the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre and private healthcare group, Bupa.
The partnership was announced yesterday by the Academic Director of the Centre, Professor Stephen Simpson, at the National Obesity Summit.
“The diet of prospective parents, both mums and dads, breastfeeding mums, and the diet imposed upon a child in the early years of its life greatly affect epigenetics, and the risk of a child growing up to be overweight or obese,” he said.
“We’re talking about the critical four years before a child’s third birthday.”
Professor Simpson said that recent studies have show that the next generation may be the first to live a shorter one than the previous.
Bupa’s Head of Clinical Leadership and Advisory, Dr Stan Goldstein said their interest was bringing the scientific knowledge to mums and dads.
“We wanted to bring what scientists and researchers had already learned and make the knowledge available to the mums and dads of the next generation ... to at least protect the next generation from the risk of overweight and obesity, and the consequent impact on diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
“We want to make a real dent into what obesity is doing to our children and what diabetes and heart disease are doing to our economy,” Dr Goldstein said.
Chair of Obesity Australia, Professor John Funder welcomed the initiative.
“While we are looking to government to lead the fight against the obesity epidemic, initiatives like this from outside government, from the wider community, are essential,” he said.
A partnership such as this brings together the vast research experience and knowledge of the Charles Perkins Centre and Bupa’s experience at making vital knowledge easily accessible to the community.
The epidemic proportions of obesity in Australia and the rest of the world make it an enormous health, social and economic issue. The total annual cost of overweight and obesity in Australia is estimated at $57 billion, including $36 billion in government subsidies but excluding indirect costs from loss of productivity, retirement, premature death and carer costs.
As Motherpedia's report earlier this week showed, the attempts made in the last decade have not seen a reduction in obesity levels, with 3 in 5 Australian adults still overweight or obese. Tragically, so are 1 in 4 Australian children.
The number of overweight children is three times higher today than it was 25 years ago; more than 15% of school-age kids are too heavy; weight-related childhood diabetes has skyrocketed; and the risk of other health problems continues to climb.
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