Youth Obesity

Germany currently lacks any nationwide outpatient, cross-sectoral, or family-centred prevention programme targeting overweight or obesity in children aged 3–6 years. In the 1990s obese children were a rarity; today obesity is arguably the norm in many public settings. The structural-poverty argument — that unhealthy food is unavoidably cheaper for low-income families — does not hold up under scrutiny. The article compares giving children unhealthy foods with past societal recognition of cigarette danger. Evidence indicates that effective lifestyle interventions must begin as early as possible, be high-intensity, involve parents and paediatricians, and be context-sensitive including outreach coaching. A majority of adolescents aged 10 to 15 in the US and UK are now clinically obese, not merely overweight. Among 3–6-year-olds in Germany, approximately 11% of girls and over 7% of boys are classified as overweight based on BMI above the 90th percentile. Overweight and obesity rates increase substantially by adolescence, reaching approximately 20% overweight among girls and 21% among boys by age 13. The current situation has no historical precedent: for the first time, the cohort that…