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Are we feeding a fear of fatness? - Times Online- Childhood Obesity News

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At a recent conference of the British Dietetic Association, Claire Mellors, a dietitian in childhood and adolescent eating disorders for the Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust, described how “a real fear of obesity is an emerging and worrying trend” that is causing a dramatic rise in the number of children with eating disorders. Through its Schools on the Move programme, the Department of Health gave pedometers to 9,000 pupils at 54 schools across England with the instruction for them “to count the number of steps they make every day”. Last year, research at the University of Sydney demonstrated that a fear of fatness is causing more teenagers to starve themselves, abuse laxatives and smoke in an effort to avoid putting on weight. In the study on nearly 9,000 adolescents, funded by the Australian Research Council, there was almost a doubling of those aged 12-18 with “eating- disordered behaviour”, claimed Jenny O’Dea, the professor of nutrition who led the investigation. Read Childhood Obesity

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