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71
Obesity
Obesity, which is indissolubly linked with nutrition, is rapidly
becoming recognised as the causal agent of society's biggest killers.
That it is often slow to claim its eventual victims in no way
vitiates its potential for ill. More than ever we are coming to
realise that much of our high coronary and circulatory death rates
have their origins in faulty dietary habits formed in the family at
very early ages—even during the first year of life. Obviously we
need to look more closely at our views on nutritional standards
and how they can best be achieved without promoting obesity
problems.
To counter nutritional deficiencies prevailing during the first
half of this century, subvented meals for school children as well as
for expectant and nursing mothers formed an integral part of our
welfare schemes and the provision of free or subsidised milk to
pregnant women and infants under 5 years became general at the
beginning of the last war. These measures, together with the
advent of National Dried Milk in 1940 and a vitamin scheme in
1941 were considered to be the main reasons for a subsequent
reduction in maternal and infantile death rates. However,
assumption by authority of responsibility for the nutrition of
infants in need does not abrogate a parent's duties in this respect
to his/her children, nor is such state intervention without its dangers.
Nationally distributed concentrated orange juice could be
held to be a significant factor in the rise of dental caries in recent
years (not only in itself but also by stimulating the consumption of
"soft" drinks) and added vitamin D to welfare products for the
rising incidence of infantile hypercalcaemia.
Although, today, problems of under-nutrition are not so pressing,
except in cases of deliberate parental neglect, there is growing
evidence of malnutrition arising from the popularity of imbalanced
diets stimulated by the mass media. For some time now, child
care experts have been complaining of the modern tendency to
overfeed babies and, on the basis of the maxim that a fat baby
more often than not becomes an obese adult, attention must be
directed first to the diet of the new-born.
Naturally breast milk is by far the best form of nutrition for
infants of this age but it is clear that the number of breast-fed
babies is declining. It follows, therefore, that more children in this
category are receiving processed milks which, despite diverse
formulae, have never proved complete substitutes. Some alignment
of carbohydrate/fat ratios has been achieved but the nature of the
fat content has been largely ignored. Human breast milk is
relatively low in saturated but high in unsaturated fatty acids