Close
UCL in the News: The big millennium babies
10 June 2007
A government-funded study of children born at the start of the new millennium has found that a quarter were officially overweight or obese by the age of three.
Preliminary results from the study, the biggest of its kind, suggest that 18% of three-year-olds are overweight and 5% are obese, meaning that 23% of children now develop weight problems before their fourth birthday. …
Professor Tim Cole, one of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) research team and a professor at the UCL Institute for Child Health, said: "It's extremely important and indeed distinctly worrying that children as young as this are as fat as they are and getting fatter.
"Being fat now, these children are more likely to be fat later."
Cole added: "There are now young adults - and, increasingly, adolescents and even children - presenting with type II diabetes. These people are going to require medical input for the rest of their lives."
John Elliott, 'The Sunday Times'
Follow us
