Fighting children’s obesity

Which are the lifestyle conditions that make children overweight and sick? Why are Spanish children more obese than German children? Is the obesity pandemic the price to pay for fast food and sedentary lifestyles? What is the role of food advertising? How can knowledge on these factors be effectively applied and communicated in pre-schools and elementary schools?

Questions as the ones raised above will be studied by the new European research project IDEFICS (Identification and prevention of dietary- and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants). IDEFICS is designed to run for five years, and will commence in September 2006. The study will, for the first time, deliver reliable data to make an European-wide assessment of the problem of "obesity in children" possible. 24 renown research institutes and small and medium sized enterprises located in 11 different EU-countries are participating in this interdisciplinary endeavour.

Two CBS professors from the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Lucia A. Reisch and Suzanne C. Beckmann, are chairing and coordinating the Working Area “Consumer Science”. The general project coordination is in the hands of the Bremen Institute of Prevention Research and Social Medicine at the University of Bremen.

IDEFICS has the goal to fight overweight, obesity, and other lifestyle-related diseases in 2-10 year old European children. The study draws on the data of about 17,000 children in nine European countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Sweden). One of the focal points of IDEFICS lies in exploring the risks for overweight and obesity in children and the associated long-term consequences. In addition, the EU-wide study offers a possibility to measure in how far sensory perception and preferences of children influence the development of overweight. Intercultural differences of both aetiology and treatment of childhood obesity will be studied.

Beyond research, IDEFICS offers activities for health promotion and prevention in kindergartens and schools. These prevention programmes will be developed and evaluated within the IDEFICS study. The results of the study will be incorporated into various guidelines on nutrition and lifestyles. Moreover, ethical guidelines for all participating countries will be developed. Another goal of IDEFICS is to introduce these guidelines into national health policy recommendations.

Duration

September 1st, 2006 - August 31st, 2011

Sponsor and Volume

European Union, 6th Framework Programme

Overall volume: 13 Mio. EUR

Project-related publications

K. Bammann, J. Peplies, M. Sjöström, L. Lissner, S. De Henauw, C. Galli, L. Iacoviello, V. Krogh, S. Marild, I. Pigeot, Y. Pitsiladis, H. Pohlabeln, L. Reisch, A. Siani, W. Ahrens (2006). Assessment of diet, physical activity, biological, social and environmental factors in a multi-centre European project on diet- and lifestyle-related disorders in children (IDEFICS).

Journal of Public Health (in print).

W. Ahrens, K. Bammann, S. de Henauw, J. Halford, A. Palou, I. Pigeot, A., M. Sjöström, on behalf of the European Consortium of the IDEFICS Project (2006). Understanding and preventing childhood obesity and related disorders - IDEFICS: A European multilevel epidemiological approach.

Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases, 16 (4): 302 – 308.