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SA pupils get a 'D' for health
02/11/2007 08:36 - (SA)
Antoinette Pienaar, Beeld
Johannesburg - More than a fifth of South African schoolchildren smoke and six percent lit up their first cigarette before the age of 10. And the most popular leisure time activity is chatting on a cellphone.
These are some of the findings revealed this week by a team of researchers.
Discovery Vitality and the South African Sports Science Institute compiled the "health report" on children with the assistance of nine local researchers. The average score of the respondents was a C-minus.
For their smoking and eating habits, the children got a D-average. The researchers said the country's anti-smoking legislation deserved an A, especially for banning tobacco adverts, and enforcing the warnings on packaging. In spite of this, 30% of children had smoked at least one cigarette.
Based on 20 of the previous 30 days, a total of 21% smoked and 7% were regular smokers.
Little exercise
At least 40% of all children did not get regular or any exercise and girls in poor communities between the ages of 16 and 19 were the least active.
Allan Pollard, chief executive of Discovery Vitality, said: "There's clearly no culture of sports participation amongst young people. The leisure-time activity most often mentioned in the research was chatting on the cellphone."
The children were generally spending more time in front of TV sets, computers or games than playing sports.
Pollard said the high level of crime could possibly have an influence on levels of activity, with people's fears for their own safety keeping them indoors.
The report revealed that 30% of adolescent girls and nearly 10% of boys were overweight or obese.
Nutrition, stunted growth
Stunted growth was another problem, where a lack of nourishing food in the child's early years led to short stature.
Children in the rural area suffered more from stunted growth, and those in the urban areas were more inclined to obesity. Children with stunted growth also had a higher tendency later to obesity. It was found that children ate little fruit or vegetables, but many consumed food and beverages with a high sugar content.
The high cost of healthy food, its lack of availability and too little knowledge of healthy eating habits were among the major causes of poor eating habits.
About 70% of children bought junk food from tuckshops and the researchers expressed concern that schools depended on tuckshop sales as an additional source of revenue.
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