Mother's outrage as healthy five-year-old son weighing 58lb is branded obese by British health Fascists

With an active lifestyle and diet rich in fruit and vegetables, five-year-old Cian Attwood would appear to be the picture of health. So his parents were astounded to receive a letter from the NHS saying he is 'clinically obese'. It warned that he is in the fattest one per cent of his age group and risks heart disease, cancer and diabetes.



Cian is 4st 2lb when the recommended weight for his age is between 2st 13lb and 3st 11lb. But he is 3ft 10in, taller than average for a five-year-old, and is clearly not fat.

His mother Kriss Hodgson, 27, warned that labelling children as obese while they are still growing could make them anxious and lead to anorexia. 'There's not an ounce of fat on Cian,' she said at the family home in Overdale, Shropshire. 'When he takes his top off he has a concave tummy and you can see his ribs. 'The NHS is making everybody think they need to be celebrity size zero and it's going to give people eating disorders.'

Miss Hodgson and her partner John Attwood, 34, gave permission for their son to be weighed at his primary school last month. A letter from NHS Telford and Wrekin was delivered two weeks later with a chart showing that Cian is 'very overweight - doctors call this clinically obese'. Miss Hodgson added: 'Cian walks into town with his dad and that's a four-mile round trip. He also likes bike riding, fishing, running around the garden and football. 'His favourite foods are peas, sweetcorn, broccoli, chicken and grapes. When I said he'd been called obese our GP laughed in my face.'

Cian is one of thousands of children being weighed as part of the Government's National Child Measurement Programme. It is part of a wide-ranging campaign to combat child obesity, which also led to this week's announcement by chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson that secondary-school pupils would have to take an annual fitness test.

Mary George, from the eating disorder charity BEAT, said: 'Some of the messages these letters are sending out are not necessarily right for young people who are vulnerable-to pressure to have the right body image. 'If a friendly nurse could speak to parents directly, it might do more good. But such officialdom is a scare tactic that takes things to extremes.'

Clare Harland, spokesman for the NHS trust, said: 'Every year children in reception and year six are weighed and measured in school as part of the programme, which is now in its fifth year. 'The data is used locally and nationally to set goals to tackle obesity and deliver the right services to the right people. 'The height and weight measurement is carried out by trained staff and the families of any child can opt out.'

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Food Fascists trying to ban iconic Australian foods

Since Australians have one of the longest life expectancies in the world, it would be more logical to ENCOURAGE Australian food favourites



JOHN Joannou knows a thing or two about Chiko Rolls [pic above] and the public's continuing demand for fried food. The Parramatta takeaway store owner dunks, fries and then drains battered products of all sorts - to go with the 150kg of chips he sells every week. But Chiko Rolls, battered savs, potato scallops and other fried morsels are firmly in the sights of a conglomeration of western Sydney councillors.

The Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils will ask takeaway shops and cafes to remove the fat and salt in foods in an attempt to make the community the healthiest in the nation. "We want to be the healthiest region in Australia by 2020," the organisation's president Alison McLaren said.

To do so, fast food shops are being asked to have "healthier options" on their menus like McDonald's, which now carries a range of items approved by the Heart Foundation. One plan is to ban the use of palm oil, which is high in saturated fats.

At Lakeside Seafood, Mr Joannou doesn't quite know what all the fuss is about - he switched to healthier cottonseed oil years ago. "People want to eat healthier foods so you have to find ways of giving that to them or as a business you'd die in the backside," he said. "We started doing this years ago off our own bat." Mr Joannou has grilled fish and salads on the menu, and gives the options of no butter on burgers and egg white instead of whole egg.

He said no matter what people would still find a way to have their "bad foods". "I don't think it's going to matter what they tell people - people are still going to want to eat these sorts of foods."

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