January 2004
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Small changes not enough to halt childhood obesity
Want
your kids to maintain their current weight? Then get ready to give them
their marching orders.
At the rate children in the United States are currently overeating, many overweight kids would need to walk three miles or more a day to just prevent further weight gain, say researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston.
Is your child overweight? |
| Determining whether your child is overweight seems simple enough, but nutrition experts say it requires more than just noticing if your child looks heavier. The key measurement for children is their Body Mass Index (BMI) percentile, which is based on the growth charts that pediatricians have been using for years, said Joan Carter, instructor of pediatrics at the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center at BCM and a registered dietitian. To track their child's risk for obesity, parents can monitor their child's BMI to see if it drifts up over time. Children with a BMI below the 5th percentile for their age and gender are considered underweight. Children with a BMI greater than the 85th percentile are at risk for being overweight and those who fall at or above the 95th percentile range are overweight. The CNRC offers an easy way to calculate your child's BMI. An energy calculator can help parents determine the relationship between physical activity and amount of calories consumed. |
“Although healthy children are expected to gain weight as they grow, weight loss is recommended for overweight children, which are those with a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile,” said Nancy Butte, PhD, a professor of pediatrics at BCM. “However, we found that many overweight children are continuing to gain weight at alarming rates.”
Butte, the director of the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center’s energy metabolism unit, measured body composition changes among 337 Hispanic children ages 5 to 19 years over a one-year period.
She found that children who were overweight at the beginning of the study and who remained overweight had gained 16 pounds over the course of the year. By contrast, those whose weight status had returned to ‘normal’ over the course of the year lost an average of one pound. Children whose weight status was ‘normal’ at the beginning and at the end of the year were found to have gained an average of nine pounds during the year – an increase that was considered normal.
“Our results suggest that a deficit of at least 260 calories per day would be required to prevent further weight gain in 90 percent of these overweight children,” she said.
According to Butte, to burn an extra 260 calories per day, the children would need to walk the equivalent of three miles or about 60 minutes per day.
“Halting the epidemic of childhood obesity will take much more
than helping children make small changes in diet and physical activity,”
Butte said. “It will require a significant and concerted societal
effort to change the way our children are eating and to increase their
physical activity.”
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