Managing Obesity - Different Age Groups Require Different Methods

New study has revealed that eating habits of overweight children aged between 9 and 17 years are different from overweight children below the age of nine.

Pediatrics researchers have discovered that younger overweight children consume more calories per day in comparison to their healthy weight peers, while older overweight children showed the reverse trend.

Fat children become fat adults, hence, obesity begins very early in most children. Once they get older, they become conscious of their body and tend to eat less; nevertheless, they continue to be obese.

Asheley Cockrell Skinner of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said the reason for this could be due to the fact that overweight kids are not as active as healthy weight children. Besides, obesity is just not about eating more but it is about the complexity of the body, its activity level and how it reacts to food eaten.

The study results suggest that different strategies may be required to carry out weight management in children of different age groups, for example, the focus on young children must be on calorie intake while in older children it must be on increasing physical activity.

This study has been recently published online in the journal Pediatrics.

Source: Medindia