Nursery World - 'Parents face an enormous task to get children to eat heathily'

A charity has warned that tackling children's taste for sugar and junk food will be a ‘public health test like no other’.

The warning from the Children’s Food Trust comes as its first state of the nation report reveals the ‘enormity of the task’ parents face to get their children to eat more healthily.

It says that the measures by the Government this year to tackle childhood obesity, including an action plan and taxation of sugary drinks, will not go anywhere near far enough.

The report is based on interviews with 2,001 parents of children aged four to 16, and research into children and family eating habits published in the last year.

Of those parents interviewed, four in ten said their children eat products like cakes, biscuits, chocolate, sweets and crisps, a few times a week, while a quarter said it was at least once a day. Children aged four to seven were the most likely to be having cakes and biscuits, sweets and chocolate at least once per day.

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