Middle-class children are more likely to be obese than those from poor families, according to new research.

Researchers say the new findings contradict the conventional ”deprivation theory” which suggests childhood weight problems are linked to poverty.

By charting youngsters” obesity levels and where they lived, the team at Leeds Metropolitan University found that those in ”middle-affluent” areas of Leeds were more likely to be very overweight than those in very poor or very wealthy postcode areas, the Daily Mail reported.

The trend was particularly high among girls.

Claire Griffiths, who led the study of 13,333 schoolchildren over three years, concluded that children living in the most deprived and most affluent areas of the city are at the lowest risk.

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One of the many factors leading to childhood obesity is increased snacking, but restricting or limiting it can backfire, say researchers.
Children in homes where parents carefully regulate snacking were found to eat more unhealthy snacks in an unregulated environment than children with less restrictive parents.

Researchers suggest that parents can ensure that their children eat fewer calories when snacking by giving them more nutritious snacks such as veggies and cheese in place of chips on a regular basis, or offering them smaller quantities of a variety of healthy snacks (multiple kinds of vegetables or fruit) on a plate.

Researchers Brian Wansink, Ph.D., Mitsuru Shimizu, Ph.D., and Adam Brumberg set out to discover whether certain types of snacks would lead children to feel full while consuming fewer calories.

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India is currently suffering from vast problems of malnutrition among children. The term malnutrition does not mean thin, starved or under-fed children. Malnutrition is an umbrella term that encompasses both under and over nutrition.

According to UNICEF, under-nutrition is the cause of 50% under-five deaths in India. On the other hand, in Delhi alone, there are nearly 24.2% obese adolescent children. Obese children are not concentrated in public schools alone. The prevalence of obesity in adolescents is 29% in public schools and 11.1% in government schools.

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A new study has found that the more hours young children spend watching TV, the worse their muscular fitness and the larger their waist size as they approach their teens, with possible consequences for adult health.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of two should not exceed more than two hours of TV viewing a day. However, evidence suggests that an increasing number of parents now use the television as an ‘electronic babysitter’.

As a consequence, a research group from the Universite de Montreal, Canada, set out to determine whether there is a correlation between the number of hours spent watching TV in early childhood and subsequent physical fitness in the same school-age children.

The Canadian team used participants from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, and assessed parental reports of the number of hours the child spent watching TV per week at 29 and 53 months of age. Muscle strength and abdominal fat correlate with fitness, and, were therefore measured when children were in the second and fourth grade, using the standing long jump test and waist circumference.

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A sharp spike in childhood obesity may more than damage overall health — it could be disrupting the onset of puberty and erode the ability to reproduce, especially in females, according to a study.

Human bodies may be scrambling to adjust to a problem that is fairly new. For thousands of years of evolution, poor
nutrition or starvation were a greater concern, rather than an overabundance of food.

“The issue of so many humans being obese is very recent in evolutionary terms, and since nutritional status is important to reproduction, metabolic syndromes caused by obesity may profoundly affect reproductive capacity,” Patrick Chappell,  assistant professor of veterinary medicine at Oregon State University and study author, was quoted as saying in the journal Frontiers in Endocrinology.

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Childhood obesity, especially the type that persists throughout the elementary grades, can harm children’s math performance, suggest a University of Missouri researcher.
Childhood obesity has increased dramatically throughout the past 40 years and has been tied to many health problems.

“The findings illustrate the complex relationships among children’s weight, social and emotional well-being, academics and time,” said Sara Gable, associate professor in the MU Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology, who led the study.

Gable looked at more than 6,250 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a nationally representative sample.

The children were followed from the time they started kindergarten through fifth grade. At five points in time, parents provided information about their families, teachers reported on the children’s interpersonal skills and emotional well-being, and children were weighed and measured; they also took academic tests.

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Efforts to combat childhood obesity should start much earlier, even before conception, say researchers.
Obesity clearly begins early – in fact, before pregnancy, the researchers wrote in the June issue of Childhood Obesity.

Overweight and pregnant? How to eat right

Markers for later heart disease appear in 3-year-olds, they stated.

They suggested a multidisciplinary approach to break the cycle of obesity moving from generation to generation is needed.

The team include six experts from institutions across the country and conducted a review of more than 1,000 studies and discussions about efforts underway, the LA Times reported.

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A weekend lie-in may help reduce risk of obesity in youngsters, say researchers.

A team of researchers in South Korea who studied children aged 10 and 11 found that those who slept in on Saturdays and Sundays were 33 per cent less likely to have a weight problem.

They believe a weekend snooze is crucial for school-age children to catch up on the sleep they miss out on during a busy week.

In the process, it helps to regulate calorie intake by reducing snacking during waking hours, the Daily Express reported.

The findings add to earlier studies showing a link between regular sleep deprivation and obesity.

But the new results confirm that lying in at the weekend is vital to help `reset` a child`s sleeping patterns.

Studies have shown that sleeping just a few hours a night can upset the body`s metabolism, leading to increased calorie intake and a greater threat of obesity-related illnesses.

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The best way in which parents can help their obese children lose weight is to change their weight themselves, say researchers.

A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and The University of Minnesota has indicated that a parent`s weight change is a key contributor to the success of a child`s weight loss in family-based treatment of childhood obesity.

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Want to prevent obesity in your kid? The effort to develop an ideal weight and good health in your child must start early. In fact, the right time to begin would be when a women conceives.