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
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