Statistics and Children’s BMI – England 2010
The Health Survey for England (HSE) is part of a programme of surveys commissioned by The NHS Information Centre for health and social care (NHS IC), and carried out since 1994 by the Joint Health Surveys Unit of the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the UCL Medical School.
The study provides regular information that cannot be obtained from other sources on a range of aspects concerning the public’s health and many of the factors that affect health. The series of Health Surveys for England was designed to monitor trends in the nation’s health, to estimate the proportion of people in England who have specified health conditions, and to estimate the prevalence of certain risk factors and combinations of risk factors associated with these conditions. The survey is also used to monitor progress towards selected health targets.
Key obesity facts highlighted in the report include:
- In 2010 more than a quarter of adults were obese (26 per cent of both sexes). In total, 68 per cent of men and 58 per cent of women were overweight or obese in the year.
- The prevalence of obesity increased from 13 per cent in 1993 to 26 per cent in 2010 among men, and from 16 per cent to 26 per cent among women. While the rate of increase in obesity was slower in the second half of the period, in 2010 obesity was at its highest level since the time series began in 1993, and in men the 2010 level was also significantly higher than in the period between 2000 and 2005.
Download the Obesity chapter of the report here:
Statistics on Obesity, Overweight and Children's BMI: England 2010 (435.27 KB pdf)
