QC joins Childhood Obesity Prevention initiative

Make healthier food and beverage choices and most importantly, get moving. Members of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) and the Heart and Stroke Foundation (HSF) impressed this upon the students of Queen’s College, as they continued to carry the message of Childhood Obesity Prevention.

The outreach, held during the school’s morning assembly yesterday, took the format of fun exercise activities and interactive games aimed at educating the students on the dangers of consuming too many sugar-sweetened beverages.

Director of the HSF, Professor Anne St. John suggested making water the beverage of choice.

“The daily intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, known as “sweet drinks”, you can substitute water and save money. We are going to recommend to cut the price of water and up the “sweet drinks”. Also, we are going to promote water coolers in schools,” she revealed.

Professor St. John explained that Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) such as; asthma, obesity, cancer, heart disease and high blood pressure/sugar are also impacting children. She reported that one in three students in Barbados is affected.

“There are consequences of the epidemic and this needs to be taken – we need to take action now, to slow it or reverse it. There is good evidence that if a child is obese at a young age, the greater the chance they will remain overweight to an older age – large infant, large child, large adult – but something can be done about this,” she stressed.

“The chronic diseases that we are trying to address affect your growth, psychosocial development during adolescence and compromise the quality of life and life span in causing eight out of ten deaths,” she added.

“Some of the solutions include five servings of fruit and vegetables a day; water; dairy; physical activity; zero or very rarely sugar- sweetened beverages. Personally take your health into your own hands in this time of the obesity and overweight epidemic – the consequences are shortening lives at all ages in Barbados,” the HSF Director further pointed out. (TL)