Nutritional education should be part of the school curriculum, GPs say

At the annual conference of Representatives of Scottish and Local Medical Committee yesterday, GPs voted that all foods should be clearly labelled with their potential health impact, and for nutritional education to be made part of the curriculum for nurseries and schools in order to tackle the UK’s obesity time-bomb.

Dr John Ip, a GP from Glasgow, who proposed the motion, said, ‘We need to start teaching children the importance of healthy eating and how to lead a healthy lifestyle early on - a message they can feed back to their families. Children make food choices at an early age and are very perceptive.’

Speaking to Nursery World, Mr Ip said that Ofsted had reported that the degree to which schools teach children about nutrition is very varied,  and said that if the subject was made mandatory this would no longer be an issue.

He went on to say that children should be taught which foods are healthy and also how to interpret information on food labels, including the amount of energy a product provides and how much exercise it would take to burn off a specific number of calories.

Dr Dean Marshall, chairman of the British Medical Association’s Scottish General Practitioners Committee, said, ‘Obesity is a very serious issue that can lead to a number of life-threatening health problems. Doctors have a role to play in supporting overweight patients and talking about the dangers of obesity, but there is a limit to what we can do.