With one in five children now classified as obese, health chiefs have declared a childhood obesity crisis.
Official figures show 2,015 overweight young people needed hospital treatment for obesity between 2012 and 2016.
And 43 of these have had to undergo surgery to reduce the size of their stomach - with the youngest just 13 years old.
Dr Ashish Desai, a paediatric surgeon specialising in childhood obesity, of King's College Hospital, says he sees patients weighing more than 30st and says they can't lose weight alone.
Having a gastric band fitted is better and cheaper than treating the chronic effects of being overweight, such as type 2 diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure.
Often the parents are not to blame, as junk food is a lot cheaper than healthy food, and parents working long hours cannot always police what their children are eating.
Here, writing for the medical blogging website The Hippocratic Post explains why bariatric surgery is the best option...
Having a gastric band fitted is better and cheaper than treating the chronic effects of being overweight, such as type 2 diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure, argues paediatric surgeon Dr Ashish Desai
It might seem bizarre, but I have to fight battles to treat my patients.
Yes of course I am fighting for NHS funding like so many colleagues, but I also have to fight against the often ill-informed views of society and even some in the medical fraternity.
This is because I run an adolescent surgical weight loss clinic at Kings College Hospital.
The patients we see are aged between 13 and 18, and weigh anything between 130kg and 200kg (20st 6lbs to 31st 7lbs).
They have related conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty livers and sleep apnoea.
It is impossible for them to lose enough weight by diet alone, and so the only option to effectively reduce weight and perhaps save their lives, is bariatric surgery - a gastric band.
However, to much of society, this is a waste of NHS resources.
Yet how much of those limited resources are actually being spent on treating the diseases that accompany obesity, such as heart problems, type 2 diabetes and asthma.
The media sometimes highlights these children and our own service as too drastic a step and dubs this as unnecessary.
It's easy to blame parents for the child’s weight. However, there is not much done to highlight the other contributing factors which lead to obesity at such early age.
For parents, it is not always possible to control their children’s weight gain.
Many of these young people are from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, often parents works shifts and are simply not at home to constantly police what their children eat.
Yes they should fill their fridges and ladders with healthy food, but realistically if a bag of salad costs £1.49, and a parent on a low income can get two filling pizzas for the same price, it is not difficult to see why they choose the pizzas.
These children are also told to stay indoors, as playing outside can be dangerous - or being seen to be dangerous.
Parents fear paedophiles, knife crime, bullying, or that their child will be labeled a bully, or will join the wrong crowd.
Single parents on a low income cannot pay for their kids to join clubs, have dance or fencing lessons, and they often don't have time to play sports with them.
I am not arguing that bariatric surgery is the answer for all these children, but certainly a strong option in selected few.
I currently operate on about three or four teenagers a year even though we see 10 obese young people every month.
If I had the funding I would still only operate on about 10 to 12 teenagers annually.
Bariatric surgery is the answer for all overweight children, but certainly a strong option in selected few,' Dr Desai said. Recent research shows the operation cures type 2 diabetes in 95 per cent of patients
But we should not stigmatise those who need such operations.
And it is important to note that this type of surgery is offered as a package.
For at least six months the adolescent is under the care of a multi-disciplinary team including a psychologist and a dietitian, and the parent or caregiver is heavily involved too.
The actual surgery is effective in three ways. The first is that it restricts the size of the stomach, by about 75 per cent.
This is important as the stomach signals to the brain that it is full so we stop eating; in obese patients this happens much later than usual.
The second is that it alters the way the brain functions so the 'I am full' message is sent much earlier, research has shown.
And the third is that bariatric surgery also has an effect on gut hormones that are in the stomach and control hunger, so the patient no long feels hungry as often.
The benefits of the surgery are easy to measure: the average weight reduction is 27 per cent - more than a quarter of their body weight.
One patient, who weighed 200kg (31st 7lbs), has lost 80kg (12st 8lbs) in the two years after his surgery.
Parents aren't always to blame, as obese children often come from poor socioeconomic background. Dr Desai said: 'If a bag of salad costs £1.49, and a parent on a low income can get two filling pizzas for the same price, it is not difficult to see why they choose the pizzas'
Some 95 per cent of children with type 2 diabetes are cured once they lose their weight, and three quarters of them manage to control their blood pressure.
Of course these teenagers need lifelong support as well as supplements such as vitamins.
If they are not kept motivated they can regain the weight if they stretch their remaining stomach. But data for bariatric surgery is encouraging.
A recent article in New England Journal of Medicine showed after three years, young people who had a gastric bypass reduced their weight by 28 per cent and their weight-related quality of life improved significantly.
Despite this evidence there is still no consistent regulation about such surgery on teenagers.
It is NICE approved, but has limited funding by NHS England so I have to argue case by case for each teenager requiring surgery.
I am currently part of a working group with NHS England to set the nationwide criteria for this surgery and work is in progress.
I am optimistic that we will succeed in our aim to achieve this regulation, however my battle to convince the public that this type of surgery is vital will continue.
It's vital we all look at the bigger picture and accept in the appropriately-selected patients both they and the NHS benefit from bariatric surgery.
Bariatric surgery is not the answer, children should be given diet and exercise tips instead, argues Professor Andrew Prentice, who runs the Energy Regulation and Obesity Group at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge
'BARIATRIC SURGERY IS NOT THE ANSWER - EXERCISE IS'
However, Professor Andrew Prentice, who runs the Energy Regulation and Obesity Group at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, believes bariatric surgery is not the answer to the childhood obesity crisis - children should be given diet and exercise tips instead.
He said: 'Obesity generally takes years to develop and hence is usually a disease of the middle-aged.
'Children do, of course, become obese, but any child with severe obesity should first be investigated for an underlying genetic, medical or psychological cause.
'Sometimes these can be corrected with great efficacy.
'Failing this the next steps would be to investigate and modify the family environment.
'Surgical intervention should always be a last resort and should probably be restricted to children with severe genetic or chromosomal disorders that induce uncontrollable hyperphagia [an abnormally great desire for food].'
This article has been reproduced with the permission of The Hippocratic Post.
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