Last year, the Government announced a diet and exercise plan to tackle obesity among youngsters.

The Government has announced a wide-ranging package to tackle childhood obesity, which is set to overtake tobacco next year as the leading preventable health risk.

A total of 22 separate initiative announced by Health Minister Jonathan Coleman include referring more overweight children for dieting and exercise interventions from the age of 4.

But Children's Commissioner Russell Wills, a paediatrician, says the moves will not cut obesity and could even harm children.

iSTOCK Obese four-year-olds to be targeted under Government obesity plan.

He said on Monday there was no evidence that referring more children to health programmes would shrink their expanding waistlines.

"Until we address the underlying drivers of obesity, counselling and referral to programmes, however well intentioned, will have very little effect."

Coleman's package targets children, families and mothers, in particular, to focus nutrition and lifestyle advice where it is most needed.

Phil Reid Health Minister Jonathan Coleman and Prime Minister John Key have unveiled a major plan to combat childhood obesity.

"At the core of the plan is a new childhood obesity health target. This target will be part of the health targets programme from 1 July 2016," Coleman said.

"By December 2017, 95 per cent of children identified as obese in the B4 School Check will be referred to an appropriate health professional for clinical assessment and family based nutrition, activity and lifestyle interventions."

Coleman said he was "surprised" by Wills' comments. "The target that we've selected was carefully consulted with experts," he said.

That included Pat Tuohy, the ministry's chief adviser on child and youth health.

"This target is totally valid from a scientific point of view and it had expert input into its development, so I'm actually surprised that the Children's Commissioner has chosen to focus in on that," Coleman said.

"So yes, B4 school checks is a screening programme but we're going to make sure the numbers picked up as being obese will then be referred for the sort of help that they actually need."

More than 58,600 children went through the free B4 School health check last year. Of them, more than 1400 were referred on for obesity-related support.

Coleman said it was expected the target would see that number treble to more than 4000 a year by December 2017.

But Wills said targets to refer more obese 4-year-olds identified through screening checks were also questionable if the interventions didn't work.

"There's no point screening for something if you don't have an effective intervention ... and it does harm by labelling and stigmatising children and their families."

Wills said the most effective solutions involved changing the "obesogenic environment" that surrounded children with junk food and bombarded them with advertising.

Moves that Wills would support - including restricting advertising to children, increasing the price of sugar, and reducing children's access to unhealthy food - were not part of Coleman's package.

Sugar taxes have been explicitly ruled out and the Government has only committed to reviewing the code for advertising to children, not tightening it.

A practising paediatrician in Hawke's Bay, Wills said his patients were increasingly obese, at an increasingly young age.

"We are seeing teenagers with type 2 diabetes. We never saw that in the past. The cost of these very obese children is going to be massive."

Among the other initiatives announced by the Government was a greater emphasis on weight-gain advice during pregnancy.

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The Ministry of Health recommends women who are a healthy weight, according to their body mass index (BMI) should gain between 11 and 16kg. Women who were underweight should gain between 12.5 and 18kg.

While overweight women were only recommended to gain between 7 and 11.5kg and obese women between 5 and 9kg.

It's recommended that after the 12th week of pregnancy, if a women is a healthy weight, the extra food needed each day is about the same as a wholegrain peanut butter sandwich and a banana.

The World Health Organisation's interim report on ending childhood obesity said evidence pointed to adopting a "life course" approach to stop obesity in children. That began before conception.

"New scientific evidence highlights the need for a multifaceted approach including a focus on the life-course dimension; thus the need to intervene even before conception and also to reduce the exposure of the pregnant woman, infant, child and adolescent to an obesogenic environment."

The report is one of a few which has informed Coleman's package and was put together under New Zealand's chief science advisor to the Prime Minister, Sir Peter Gluckman.

It also found that overall, evidence did support the rationale behind taxing sugary drinks and certain foods.

"Overall, the rationale for and effectiveness of taxation measures to influence consumption are well-supported by the available evidence."

It would seem the Government disagreed with that portion of the report however, ruling out any tax initiatives to combat obesity.

"We are working with the food industry on the role they can play. Options discussed so far include appropriate marketing and advertising to children and food labelling," said Coleman.

That included the introduction of a new health star rating - which was voluntary - and a national public awareness campaign.

The awareness campaign will target parents and caregivers of children under 18 years, and is set to begin next month.

Coleman said childhood obesity was a serious issue which "means some of our kids could end up living shorter lives than their parents".

Prime Minister John Key said he was confident the package would go "some way" to addressing childhood obesity.

An expert advisory group has advised on the package. That included Auckland University Professor Boyd Swinburn who has advocated for a sugar tax.

High profile sports stars are confirmed, but yet to be announced.

Labour leader Andrew Little said "beating up on mums-to-be" was not the way to tackle obesity.

"Prenatal habits might be important to your child's eating habits, but let's not let the rest of us off the hook by targeting pregnant women.

"As the New Zealand Medical Association has pointed out tackling obesity needs to be embedded in everything, from new buildings to school classrooms," said Little.

The food industry needed a "rev up" as well.

"There's no reason manufacturers couldn't already have been reducing sugar and saturated fat in process food. That shows there needs to be some very strong directives from the Government."

During a press conference, Coleman emphatically ruled that out, saying industry would likely respond to market demand for less sugar content.

Little said the Government was "reinventing the wheel" with its Healthy Families NZ programme.

The flagship Government programme, which forms part of the national package, was introduced last year, and focuses on intensive education and attitude changes at a community level.

"One of the first things the National Government did was scrap Labour's successful Healthy Eating-Healthy Action programme and the guidelines around junk food in school, arguing at the time it wanted to focus on maternal and new-born nutrition," Little said.

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