Lessons from my wartime childhood about obesity, school and sport

Would a return to rationing control child obesity?

THE note of resignation in Hilary Andrews’s throw-away remark that the Government could reintroduce rationing to curb child obesity suggests that the problem may well be intractable (The Yorkshire Post, February 19).

One in three primary children in Yorkshire now obese

Rationing would be damaging to the economy and would surely be construed as the work of a ‘nanny state’.

The reasons for wartime children being leaner than  their counterparts of today are myriad.

Growing up during the war,  I walked to school and ran home.

I ate a lot of rubbish, it has to be said: bread and salty dripping being a special favourite.

It was safe to play in the street because there was little traffic: I hardly ever saw the inside of a car.

Children were never addicted to radio as is now sometimes the case with television, video and smartphone.

The demise of school sport since the teachers’ industrial action in the 1980s means that the only access to organised boys’ and girls’ football is by joining a club – which is expensive.

Teachers ought to be remunerated for supervising out- of-hours sport, but it isn’t going to happen.