https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-war-on-childhood-obesity-needs-a-war-on-blame/

According to a new report recently released by the World Obesity Federation, obesity will affect more than 250 million kids by 2030. While media outlets and newsfeeds continuously remind us of the rising rates of childhood obesity—which have tripled in the past 20 years—far less attention has been paid to the complex solutions needed to address this problem.

It seems the obvious answer to the rising prevalence of childhood obesity would be to reduce calorie intake and increase physical activity. If calories out exceed calories in then weight loss is inevitable, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. And the hundreds of campaigns and interventions attempting to tackle childhood obesity are a testament of that. Take, for example, the large-scale WAVES study, which after a 12-month intervention across 54 schools, showed no differences between intervention and control schools in terms of improvements in students’ body mass index (BMI). School-based interventions may have little impact on obesity without broader societal and environmental efforts in place.