A child gets his body fat measured. The percentage of overweight Swiss children saw a decline, according to a recent ETHZ study, but 1 in 6 are still considered overweight. (Keystone)

It’s common sense: eat healthier food and move more, and you will be less likely to be overweight than if you don’t move and eat junk food. And getting the word out is part of fighting fat in children.

ISABELLE AEBERLI: What we saw in Switzerland is that there have been a lot of small programs and projects going on, sometimes school based, sometimes single town or so where they have tried to actually stop this increase of overweight and obesity.

Isabelle Aeberli is with the ETHZ and lead researcher on the study.She says her team studied Swiss children between the ages of six and 13 in 2002 and 2007

AEBERLI: Well, we have seen in 2002 that we had a prevalence of overweight combined with obesity of almost 20 per cent. So we repeated the study from 2002 again in 2007 - again we had over 2,000 children participating and we have seen in 2007 a slight decrease in the prevalence of both overweight and obesity.

Children are more likely to be obese in bigger cities, according to Aeberli’s report. Other results from the obesity congress indicate that the poorer people are, the more likely they are to be overweight. But children of all economic classes are seeing increases in fat make-up.

Despite Switzerland’s kids actually losing body-fat percentage, Aeberli says there is still concern.

AEBERLI: We still have one in six children still being overweight and this is still too much. It is very important that all those programs can go on and maybe even more programs can be launched and carried out in the future.

more WRS coverage on children