Leisure centre in bid to beat obesity (From Daily Echo)

Leisure centre in bid to beat obesity

7:00am Tuesday 28th August 2007 in

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A HAMPSHIRE leisure centre will help tackle child obesity thanks to a £47,000 grant from The Big Lottery Wellbeing Programme.

River Park Leisure Centre in Winchester has set up a programme to tackle the issue that is becoming a national crisis.

By 2020 at least a fifth of boys and a third of girls in the UK will be obese unless action is taken now, says the Government.

The leisure centre programme will be known as MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition...Do it) and will focus on families with overweight or obese children. Healthy eating and active lifestyles are at the heart of the scheme.

MEND consists of 18 free sessions over ten weeks and includes fun exercise sessions for the children participating in the programme and theory sessions for the children and their families.