Junk-food diet 'threatens child health': Improvements in heart care could be wiped out by an addiction to fatty foods. David Nicholson-Lord reports

MANY improvements in children's health are in danger of being wiped out because of their growing consumption of junk food high in fat, sugar and salt, it was claimed yesterday.

Food industry propaganda, coupled with the erosion of the school meals service and the growth of food poverty, is creating a generation of children who may face an increased risk of heart disease and strokes when they grow up, according to a report, Food for Children. Their general health will also be poorer.

Professor Desmond Julian, chairman of the National Forum for Coronary Heart Disease Prevention, which produced the report, said the progress made against heart disease, rates of which are falling in the UK, could be reversed in the next century unless children's diet was improved. According to the report, children are exceeding nationally agreed guidelines for fat and sugar - three-quarters exceed the recommended fat intake - but many are failing to consume adequate levels of vitamins and minerals such as calcium, iron, folic acid and vitamin E.

Ten per cent of children are overweight and iron deficiency is widespread among adolescent girls. Of children aged 11 to 16, only 4 per cent of boys and 1 per cent of girls are reaching levels of physical activity necessary to maintain cardiac health. Among schoolchildren generally, consumption of dietary fibre, which may help to prevent cancer and other diseases of the bowel in later life, is low. Many of these poor eating patterns continue into later life. Not only are eating habits formed in childhood: there is evidence that obesity and the build-up of fat levels in the body, linked to heart disease later on, start early in life.

Anaemic mothers are more likely to give birth to small babies, who may themselves suffer raised blood pressure in middle age. Evidence suggests that at least half of the children who weigh over 20 per cent more than normal at the age of 11 will be overweight or obese in early adulthood. The forum's report is backed by more than 30 medical and health bodies, including the British Medical Association, the British Heart Foundation and five royal colleges. It calls for restrictions on advertising and new codes of practice, nutritional guidelines for school meals and the creation of a health-promoting environment through independent advice to schools and parents on diet and health - possibly financed by a levy on the food industry.

Imogen Sharp, director of the forum, said other countries limited food advertising to which children were exposed and called for an 8pm watershed, before which advertisements for children's snack foods could not be shown. 'We need policy changes to make healthy choices easy choices,' she added.

The report criticises the 'hidden curriculum' of school vending machine, playground van, and tuck shop, which tend to sell crisps, sweets and confectionery. Ms Sharp said industry targeted 200 products at schools in the guise of information packs, many designed to resemble national curriculum documents. Schools short of cash often relied on these.

The 1980 Education Act abandoned minimum nutritional standards for school meals and removed the duty on councils to provide them. Since 1979 the proportion of children taking school meals has fallen from 64 per cent to 42 per cent. One in nine children misses breakfast and one in six has no cooked meal in the evening: half or more consume crisps, snacks and biscuits instead of an evening meal. One study of 11-year-olds found that chips and crisps formed their largest source of energy.

Maggie Sanderson, of the British Dietetic Association, said: 'At the end of the century, as at the beginning of the century, it is the children of the poor who are most at risk, albeit that the types of disease have changed. If we want to break this cycle of poverty and ill-health, we need to influence children's diets now.'

National Chip Week, page 18

FIBRE VERSUS FAT

Each week the typical 11-year- old consumes four packets of crisps, six cans of soft drinks, seven bars of chocolate or sweets, seven biscuits, three bags of chips and seven cakes or puddings. His or her weekly intake of fruit and vegetables is equivalent to four small carrots and three small apples.

(Photograph omitted)