Much of the snacking these days involves pre-packaged foods, which are high in calories and low in nutrients. The popularity of these fattening treats, backed by big-budget advertising campaigns, is increasingly seen as an important contributor to the greater prevalence of obesity among school-age children.

Recent studies involving randomly selected middle-school students found that about one in six could be classified as overweight or obese. What worried public health workers was that most of these bulging students already had high cholesterol levels and about one-third had the potential to become diabetic before they reached adulthood.

Many fat children grow up to become fat adults, who are prone to a wide range of illnesses, including heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, which can lead to disability or premature death. Apart from their capacity to reduce the overall quality of life, obesity-linked diseases exact a large economic price by diminishing productivity through sickness and early death and straining healthcare resources.

Recognising the potential health hazards of snacking, public health professionals, including nutritionists, are now emphasising the need to teach good eating habits to young children, along with the importance of regular exercise.

The causes of the obesity epidemic are manifold, starting with our genetic make-up - we are predisposed to take pleasure in calorie-rich foods - and include economic development, higher incomes, changing diet, globalisation and a range of changes in the nature of work and leisure. In the past, there was a tendency to treat obesity as an issue of individual responsibility, namely a lack of discipline. Only recently have developing countries, including Thailand, acknowledged the role of public policy in the fight against the epidemic.

While teaching young children about good nutrition is useful, the problem, according to medical experts, is that bad eating habits start even before babies leave the cradle. Many ignorant parents condition their babies to become accustomed to sweetness by flavouring milk in feeding bottles with sugar or syrups. When they grow older, too many toddlers become hooked on soft drinks and junk food.

Many parents are too busy to supervise their children's eating habits. Instead of making sure their children have proper meals, comprising nutritious and varied offerings from all food groups, they allow them to indulge in soft drinks and junk food unsupervised.

To be effective in the fight against child obesity, school administrators and parents must work together more closely to promote good eating habits and a more balanced approach to education that emphasises academic achievement as well as active participation in sports.

The Public Health Ministry, Kasetsart University and the Thai Health Promotion Foundation should be commended for their proactive role in trying to involve manufacturers of pre-packaged snacks, who have hitherto been blamed for their health-damaging products laden with inordinate amounts of starch, fat, sugar and sodium. They have come up with a carrot-and-stick approach to compel these snack manufacturers to show social responsibility by either cutting back on harmful ingredients and including health-enhancing ones like fibre and additional nutrients, or come up with brand new healthy snacks.

All snack manufacturers will be required to report the nutritional value of their products on the packaging. Those producers who make the extra effort to produce healthy products will be awarded a seal of approval as "good snacks for children" that they can use for promotional purposes. Meanwhile, unhealthy snacks will be subjected to campaigns against junk food. All this is well and good but the most important thing, which is quite difficult to achieve, is to make alternative healthy snacks at least nearly as delicious and satisfying as those greasy, horribly mouth-watering products they aim to replace.