The government has pledged £75m to create an anti-obesity campaign to help tackle the problem of expanding waistlines and indolence among children.
The health secretary, Alan Johnson, announced the campaign in parliament today as part of a five-pronged cross-governmental strategy called Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives.
The government has pledged £372m to tackle the child obesity issue in the UK, including £75m for a campaign to "empower parents to make changes to their children's diet and increase levels of physical activity".
The government said it will not be a campaign telling people how to raise their children, but a "movement" to which parents, commercial partners and the third sector can contribute.
Initiatives will include encouraging the uptake of "five a day", breastfeeding, a healthy diet and exercise.
"The core of the problem is simple - we eat too much and we do too little exercise," Johnson said. "The solution is more complex. It is not the government's role to hector or lecture people, but we have a duty to support them in leading healthier lifestyles."
A healthy food code of good practice is also to be developed by the government, in conjunction with the food and drink industry, with the aim of developing a single, simple method of labelling foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar.
Until now there has a been a stand-off between the Food Standards Agency's "traffic light" labelling method and rival systems used by retailers and food companies who argue that it is too simplistic.
The start of Ofcom's review of restrictions on the advertising of junk food to children will also be brought forward to the summer, the government announced today.
Today's newly announced obesity strategy stops short of imposing a blanket pre-9pm watershed ban on junk food advertising, as predicted by MediaGuardian.co.uk. This was a move that had been widely feared by the advertising industry.
The government also announced that a working group will be set up in conjunction with the entertainment and technology industries to "ensure that they continue to develop tools to allow parents to manage the time that their children spend watching TV or playing sedentary games, online and much more widely".
"Tackling obesity in the adults of tomorrow requires winning the hearts and minds of young people today," said Ed Balls, the secretary of state for children, schools and families.
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