When it comes to our kids, we want to give them the best start in life.
HBF Lunch & Play Report (PDF 7MB)
Helping our kids develop positive relationships with food and exercise from a young age is one of the best ways to set them up for healthy and happy lives. But instilling those habits is easier said than done when a mobile phone is rarely more than an arm’s length away, and chips, biscuits and sugar laden snack bars line the supermarket aisles designed to fill lunch boxes.
HBF wanted to better understand how healthy our next generation really is. So we asked Western Australian parents of school aged children about their kids’ exercise, diet and screen time habits.
The results were surprising. Parents were generally optimistic about their children’s overall health. But those feelings of optimism were at odds with other important measures of health explored in our survey:
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71% of WA parents believe their children’s current diet is ‘healthy’ or ‘very healthy’.
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77% ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ their children do a healthy amount of physical activity.
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82% of WA parents believe their children are ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ to be a healthy weight during adulthood.
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Almost 7 in 10 WA school children’s lunch boxes don’t contain any vegetables in a week.
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On weekends and school holidays, the average WA child sits in front of a computer, TV, mobile phone or tablet for longer than health experts recommend.
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Today, two thirds of Australian adults are overweight or obese.*
*Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
Inside this report, you’ll find further insights from our Lunch and Play and iKids surveys as well as healthy and easy-to-whip-up recipes from some of our favourite Aussie bloggers, a weekly lunch box meal plan and fun activities to get kids moving.