Children are now less likely to be overweight or obese in the UK than they were ten years ago.
In 2012, the year of the latest available data, of 2-15 year olds in England 14% were overweight and 14% were obese according to the Health Survey for England. In 2004 34% of children were either overweight or obese.
Children age 11-15 had a higher prevalence of being overweight including obesity than those aged 2-10, with the same prevalence rate for boys and girls. The data was published in the ONS' report Measuring National Well-being - Exploring the well-being of Children in the UK, 2014.
The majority of children, 93%, perceived their health as excellent, very good or good in the most recent UK Household Longitudinal survey in 2010-11 and 53% rated their happiness with their health as high, 9% rated their happiness with their health as low.
Personal well-being results from 2013 showed that life satisfaction was moderate to high for 77% of children and 74% reported a moderate to high level of happiness the day before, ONS data revealed.
Satisfaction with appearance ratings were similar, in 2011-12, 74% of children age 10-15 were relatively happy with their appearance, 12% were unhappy with the way they looked. Among girls age 10-15 17% were relatively unhappy with their appearance, compared with 8% of boys the same age.
Steve Casey, head of marketing and propositions as Ageas Protect said: "It's heartening to see that over three quarters of children rated their life satisfaction as moderate to high and also that it's good that the risk factors for children are coming under the spotlight even more. Ageas Protect's claims stats for critical illness showed that 12% of claims we paid in 2013 were for children. The vast majority of these were for the childhood cancers."
