If you want your children to be healthy weight, new research suggests that you need to cut the time the spend in front of the television, and being a boy helps, too.
Children are at greater risk of obesity if they watch a lot of television, have an overweight mother, or are female according to recent research from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
The research shows that sedentary activity, such as watching a lot of television has a far greater impact on the percentage of body fat than expected. Interestingly, high levels of exercise or physical activity did not appear to protect against the risk of gaining weight. More importantly, children that showed higher a body fat percentage at age 3½ continued to be overweight at age 7 years suggesting that the children would grow up to be overweight adults.
The study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, monitored the weight of 571 New Zealand children of European heritage from birth to age 7. The research found having a mother who was overweight or obese, being a girl, and spending a lot of time in front of the TV were all independently associated with the chances of becoming obese.
Other factors include rapidly gaining weight in early childhood and having rapid growth spurts.
Professor Ed Mitchell of the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences believes obesity is set early in life and that studying childhood weight and body fat percentages will provide clues to preventing children from growing into overweight adults.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
A Fat Mum and Too Much TV Linked to Obesity
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5 comments:
Oh, God, girl, my child is doomed.
I recently realized that I gained my weight in response to my life, so that I would never be attractive to another man.
It didn't work and now I am fat. AUGUGGGHHHHHH!
God bless you this week.
I wonder how the nature/nurture balance fits in with this research. It was "common wisdon" way, way back in my teenage years that if you wanted to know what your girlfriend would look like in twenty years, all you had to do was check out her mother.
Now where'd I leave that remote?
I think like most things it's a mix of nature and nurture, but these days the environment seems to favour inactivity and overeating so even if your genetics don't predispose you to being overweight there's a good chance you'll get there if you make poor lifestyle choices.
Someone my husband and I know, I can't say who, thought it was terrible that after dinner each night, I asked my husband to take the boys outside to play - tag, ball, ride bikes, hide and seek. This person implied that my husband was whipped. I didn't bother to inform them that after being cooped up in a corporate office all day, my husband was more than happy to get outside and be a big kid.
I don't think that TV is evil, but "all things in moderation" is a terrific guideline.
Good on you Virtual! Plus it's fun to do activities together
TV can be entertaining and educational. The research shows that the more time you spend watching TV the higher your body fat % is likely to be. If you're counteracting inactivity with decent play time it should balance out, although the research showed that small spurts of exercise are not enough. It had to be a decent amount of activity.
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