People often make assumptions that make it harder to understand how childhood obesity happens, and how it can be ended.
Like:
-
Self-makingness: the idea that childhood obesity happens because parents make bad decisions and lack willpower – and is a sign of personal failure
-
Othering: the belief that childhood obesity happens to other people, in other places
-
Education as the only answer: people think that parents and teenagers need to be educated to make better health choices
-
Fatalism: obesity is seen as a crisis of modern life and an impending threat to our NHS
Here’s what the British public thinks about childhood obesity:
Read more about our research methodology and findings here