According to a report in Saturday’s Independent newspaper, health experts in the UK are being urged to be more diplomatic (make that PC) over the way they tell parents that their children are overweight. NHS guidance notes explain that letters to parents about their children should be “non-judgmental and positively phrased”.

In the past, following NHS testing,  parents with very overweight children would be informed that “Your child’s result is in the very overweight range. Doctors call this clinically obese”. The letter went on to outline the obvious health risks and further stated “You might be surprised your child’s result is in the overweight range. It can sometimes be difficult to tell if your child is overweight as they may look similar to other children of their age, but more children are overweight than ever before”. You can say that again!

That last sentence says it all and its truth is evidenced by a random check of your local high street during the school holidays. Times have changed for sure and those of us growing up prior to the 1980s will remember a time when it was rare that fellow children were overweight, so much so that virtually every class of say 30 children had one person referred to as “fatty” or something equally cruel. Nowadays, this wouldn’t happen since the term could probably apply to half the class! The satirical “Billy Bunter” books by Frank Richards would be completely wasted nowadays. A fat boy, continuously eating pies and cream cakes and avoiding exercise? So what, what’s funny about that? Perfectly normal behaviour in modern Britain.

Another article in yesterday’s Sunday Times was headed “Obesity alert over 20-stone 10 year-olds” and referred to a 10 year old girl weighing 24 stone (that’s 336 pounds) and an 11 year old boy weighing 23 stone. The article quoted NHS figures stating that 1 in 10 children is obese when they start primary school, aged 5 years and a third are obese when they leave, aged 11. In the past decade there has been a four-fold increase in the number of children and teenagers admitted to hospital with obesity-related conditions.

So, in the middle of what is quite clearly a national crisis (in fact the crisis affects the whole western world) the NHS says that, in toning down the letters to parents, “it is important to consider that parents receiving the letter may be sensitive to the information and feel that their parent skills are being criticised”. Well, so what! With the obvious exceptions of children who cannot help their weight through medical or psychological conditions, many parents deserve to be criticised. They should think about what they allow their children to eat, they should stop banishing them to their bedrooms all day to play their computer games and should encourage them to get out in the fresh air and if possible to play sport.

Politically correct language by the NHS isn’t going to help solve the problem. Parents need to be told the truth, in blunt, clear and unambiguous terms. Your child is overweight and needs your help. Do something about it.