Take care of your child's weight problems early on

An NICHD funded study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics this month, states that being overweight at any time during early childhood should prompt interventions by pediatricians in counseling parents about healthy eating and activity patterns for their child, since obesity in the teen years is highly predictive of obesity in adulthood.

Researchers tracked the height and weight of roughly 1400 healthy subjects starting in infancy through about 12 years of age. At the end of the study, 1042 children still remained in the sample, of whom 555 had been weighed and measured at all seven points in time.

Results showed that children who were ever overweight in the preschool years were five times more likely to be overweight at age 12 than the rest of the cohort. They defined overweight as having a body mass index (BMI) greater than the 85th percentile for age.

During elementary school years, children who were overweight at 7, 9, and 11 years of age had a 374-fold increased risk of being heavy at age 12 than those who remained below the 85th percentile.

Moreover, 60 percent of children who were ever overweight during preschool years and 80 percent of those ever overweight during elementary school age were overweight at the end of the study.

Even being in the top 50th percentile by age 3 puts children at higher risk, with 40 percent being overweight at age 12, they note. As would be expected, none of the children who were below the 50th percentile for BMI during elementary school years were overweight at age 12.

Courtesy Reuters

Bonnie - once again, I implore parents to be proactive and vigilant about their eating habits for themselves and their children. The numbers don't lie.

There are a few simple steps to can get you started...EAT REAL FOOD...BALANCE YOUR PROTEINS, CARBS, AND FATS. Use us as a resource, whether by private counseling or our self-help literature.