Policies that restrict fast-food outlets may reduce childhood obesity in deprived areas
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Key takeaways:
- Population-level childhood obesity/overweight prevalence did not drop in Gateshead, England, after a policy that limited new fast-food outlets.
- Childhood overweight/obesity did drop in deprived areas.
Policies to reduce childhood obesity that restrict new fast-food outlets in local deprived areas with a high concentration of outlets may help to reduce childhood overweight and obesity, according to findings published in Obesity.
“The challenge of healthy weight and access to nutritious food is complex, ever changing, and hard to resolve,” Alice Wiseman, director of public health at Gateshead Council and Newcastle Council, said in a press release. “There is no silver bullet, and several interventions are needed to create real, impactful and lasting change.”
England has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in Europe, according to researchers. Since the enactment of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, local governments such as Gateshead in North East England have been responsible for improving population health. Gateshead, which is in the top 15% of local deprived authorities in England, banned any new fast-food outlets from being developed in the community to help reduce childhood obesity in 2015.
Wiseman and colleagues investigated whether this policy led to reduced overweight and obesity prevalence at the population level among children aged 10 to 11 years or reduced inequalities in childhood overweight and obesity in high fast-food concentration areas.
They gathered data from the National Child Measurement Programme, the Food Standards Agency Food Hygiene Rating Scheme and the Office of National Statistics between 2012 and 2020, and they assessed local area deprivation using the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). Further, they used propensity score matching to identify a control group from five local authorities in North East England that had not adopted any of the planning guidance.
The researchers found that Gateshead had a higher density of fast-food outlets compared with five local control authorities across the study period.
Overall, results of a difference-in-differences model showed no significant relationship between the planning guidance and the prevalence of overweight and obesity for children aged 10 to 11 years in Gateshead compared with the control areas.
However, areas with high levels of deprivation did experience reductions in childhood overweight and obesity compared with control areas.
Specifically, the prevalence of overweight and obesity was reduced by 4.8% (P < .01) for children in the second IMD quintile and by 4.1% (P < .01) for those in the third IMD quintile in Gateshead after policy implementation, with no significant changes observed for the other quintiles.
The researchers noted several limitations to this study, including that their study did not identify the time frame it would take for changes in the food environment to create observable changes in childhood overweight and obesity.
“Given that a majority of local authorities in England have implemented planning policies that target hot food takeaways, if these are like Gateshead’s and are suitably robust and restrictive, it is possible that they could contribute to our efforts to reduce childhood overweight and obesity,” Heather Brown, PhD, MSc, professor of health inequalities from the faculty of health and medicine at Lancaster University, U.K., said in the press release. “Furthermore, given that such food establishments are found in greater density in more deprived communities, such policies may help reduce health inequalities.”
Reference:
- How limiting new fast-food outlets may reduce childhood obesity. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1062072. Published Oct. 23, 2024. Accessed Oct. 28, 2024.
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