Schools in Wales to promote healthier choices as part of obesity strategy

The Welsh Government has launched its long term strategy to prevent and reduce obesity, called Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales.

The strategy has a strong focus on prevention and will aim to make childcare settings, schools and higher and further education, workplaces and community settings 'healthy settings'.

It also aims to support people to be able to make healthy choices. This will focus on changing the way we shop, the way we eat out, the way we travel, or how we use outdoor spaces.

The strategy will also provide advice, information and support. This includes providing people with the opportunity to regularly discuss their lifestyle choices with health and care professionals.

Health Minister Vaughan Gething, said: "Obesity is projected to overtake smoking as the nation’s biggest public health challenge. Too often people are confronted with unhealthy choices and bombarded with messages that promote unhealthy options. A culture that is occurring not just in Wales but across the Western world, we need to redress the balance.Small steps towards healthier habits can create big change, and this is the basis of the strategy.

"Everybody needs to play a role, prevention cannot be achieved by Government, the NHS or any other individual sector alone. I will be establishing a National Implementation Board later this year to drive forward National priorities for 2020-22.

"My ambition is for Wales to be one of the first countries in the world to witness declining rates of obesity. This will have a significant and long-lasting legacy for both our current and future generations."