Leave Your Buggy At Home

THE growing obesity epidemic in Britain costs the NHS a whopping £4.2 billion a year.

In a bid to tackle the growing problem politicians are asking parents to be more responsible for their kids' weight and fitness.

A quarter of adults in Britain are now classed as clinically obese and almost one in five 10 to 11-year-olds are overweight.

Now parents have been told toddlers should be made to walk on short trips in a bid to combat the problem.

Last week Health Secretary Andrew Lansley issued a 'call to action' in a bid to cut England's obesity rate - which is currently one of the highest in Europe - by 2020.

The public health minister, Anne Milton, who is herself a mother of four children, vented her frustrations saying 'Encouraging children to walk is one way of getting the whole family to take more exercise.'

Nickie Aiken, Westminster council’s cabinet member for children, responsed to this by asking for more drastic measures advising parents to stop using strollers.  The stroller have become a fashion statement item. Miss Aiken has has two children aged five and seven

'Children should be encouraged to walk to school, eat healthily or stop using buggies on short trips at the age of three. Children should lead an active life. We have to recognise that childhood obesity is a growing problem."

'I see children as old as five in a buggy. We should start to stop using the buggy as much as we can from three.'

A 2007 Foresight report predicted that the NHS costs associated with obesity will double to £10 billion per year by 2050, and that costs to the wider society will reach £50 billion per year by 2050.