A quarter of Canberra children are overweight or obese, and only one in five do the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day, a snapshot of the state of the ACT's children reports.
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Only five per cent are eating the recommended five serves of vegetables a day.
The snapshot shows improvement over most areas in recent years, but no significant change in vegetable eating, physical exercise or the proportion of children who are overweight. The ACT's rates of overweight and obese children are slightly lower than the national figures, with 20.2 per cent of children overweight nationally (18.9 per cent in the ACT) and 7.4 per cent obese (5.5 per cent in the ACT).
Smoking
There is good news on smoking, and to a lesser extent on alcohol. In 2014, 81 per cent of Canberra secondary students had never smoked a cigarette, a big improvement over the past decade, with 44 per cent in 1996 reporting that they had never smoked. With changes in the way the information is reported, though, the report urges caution with the 2014 figure.
Smoking rates are much worse among indigenous secondary students, with 16 per cent reporting smoking in the past week (compared with 5 per cent non-indigenous).
Among Aboriginal women, though, 46.5 per cent reported smoking during pregnancy in 2011-13, unchanged in six years and on a par with national figures. Among non-aboriginal women, 6.6 per cent reported smoking during pregnancy in the ACT (13 per cent nationally).
