Posted on 08/10/2006 6:38:50 PM PDT by traumer
Young children, especially infants, are now more likely to be overweight than two decades ago, according to a U.S. study.
"The obesity epidemic has spared no age group, even our youngest children," said Dr. Matthew Gillman, the senior author of the study and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
Over 22 years in Massachusetts, the number of overweight infants increased by 74 per cent, the researchers reported Wednesday.
The results are important for public health because studies show faster weight gain in the first few months after birth is associated with obesity later in life.
"These results show that efforts to prevent obesity must start at the earliest stages of human development, even before birth," Gillman said.
These efforts, he said, should include avoiding smoking and excessive weight gain during pregnancy, preventing gestational diabetes, and promoting breastfeeding.
Average weight gain during pregnancy should be between 25 to 30 pounds, according to Health Canada.
The American researchers collected height and weight measurements from the electronic medical records of more than 120,000 children younger than six years old in the state.
Between 1980 and 2001, the prevalence of overweight children increased from 6.3 per cent to 10 per cent, while the proportion at risk of becoming overweight grew from 11.1 per cent to 14.3 per cent overall.
The study appears in the July issue of the journal Obesity.
Need to have Reuters photoshop a toddler on a treadmill.
Huh? Isn't every one of us "at risk" of becoming overweight, if we, like, eat too much and don't exercise? I'll bet they just made the number up.
(Studies show ... ping!)
OK, Junior, time for your Uterorobics. Step, two, three, four, turn, two, three, four.
Like "celebtity", the word "epidemic" is becoming extremely devalued.
It's a bunch of nonsense.
How you are as an INFANT does NOT correlate to how you will be when you are an adult. Your eating habits as an ADULT determine that. People are so stupid today, they'll believe anything.
Fat is important to infants. An infant can loose 1/3 of their body weight in less than 48 hours if they get even a mild stomach or intestinal virus.
formula, putting babies to bed with the bottle, bad parenting. I bet most of the obese babies have bottle rot teeth.
>>These results show that efforts to prevent obesity must start at the earliest stages of human development, even before birth <<
Hmmmmm, how do we exercise that "mass of cells"?
I put my kids to bed with a bottle, no weight problem, no bottle mouth.
There was water in the bottles.
I kid you not. Now we have no pop, no juice boxes and no 10% real juice drinks. My girls have water (from the tap I might add) in sports bottles always in the fridge.
My girls can't even stand bubbles in their drinks and will choose a bottled water over juice box at a party.
My son was 9 lbs at birth, weighed 30 lbs at age 1 (oy my aching back, LOL) 40 lbs at age 2, and then he stopped gaining weight and was still 40 lbs at age 4. He was a chunky kid, but he "skinnied up" just fine.
Today he's 6 foot and weighs about 150 (still a little on the skinny side.)
Sad part about this is parents will try to restrict their kids diets when fat and cholesterol is necessary for brain development in babies and toddlers. If they want to restrict something, cut out juice. My pediatrician always said, you might as well hand them a glass of water with sugar in it as give them juice (so we never did the juice routine.)
I blame the trans-fats.
Wait a second. It says you should avoid smoking during pregnancy (duh) to help prevent infant obesity? Makes no sense. I thought... no, I know.... smoking is a cause of lower birth weights. I'm tired and it's late for me. What am I missing here?
My husband and I joke that we're going to start giving our (just turned) 4 month old coffee and cigarettes to slow his growth down: he's already 20 pounds and 27 inches long. Not a huge baby at birth, either (8lbs 13 oz, 21" long). People assume he's much older and I guess they think he's "slow" or something when he acts like a 4 month old and not a 10 month old. It'd be funny if it wasn't my kid.
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