While many parents accuse today’s celebrities of being poor role models, a few famous faces have been encouraging their young admirers to get into shape by taking part in fitness ‘bootcamps’. With the rate at which technology is currently integrating itself into the everyday lives of young people, it’s easy to see why many children [...]
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According to a study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood journal, two thirds of obese children exhibit a problem with their health which is a contributor to heart disease. High cholesterol, blood sugar and high blood pressure may already be present by 12 years of age.
read moreA recent study from Canada has shown that the number of hours spent watching TV between two years and four years old can have a detrimental effect on the size of a child’s waistline by the age of 10. The study, which was published in a BioMed Central journal, looked at the television habits of 1,314 children. One extra hour of TV viewing each week at age four could affect the muscle fitness of a child aged 10 and also increase the size of their waste by half a millimetre.
read moreA mum has put her daughter on a diet in a bid to avoid child obesity. The mum, Aly Gilardoni, who is obese and a UK size 22, has enforced a strict diet of only 700 calories a day on her daughter since the age of two. Her daughter who is now eight years old is half a stone underweight.
A child of eight years old should be eating 1700 calories a day to maintain a healthy weight, but mum Aly believes that (more…)
Following a revamp of school meals to provide healthier options, councils are now banning junk food outlets from the areas around schools, leisure centres and parks in a bid to prevent child obesity. The first council to do this was Waltham Forest council in East London, who placed a 400 metre zone around schools and leisure centres to stop junk food outlets operating there. Many fast food outlets are targeting pupils with (more…)
There are now 25 percent of adults who are classed as obese with a large percentage of the rest being overweight. Child obesity is also on the increase, with one in seven girls and one in six boys being obese. A child who is obese is likely to become an obese adult, falling prey to weight related illness such as (more…)
Latest figures show that Suffolk were beating targets set in a bid to tackle child obesity. In 2009 figures revealed that one in six 11 year olds in the county were diagnosed as obese, leading to fears that the health services in Suffolk would become overstretched in the future.
There are still one in six ten year olds and one in eleven children of reception class who are still classed as (more…)
Figures for child obesity levels in the United Kingdom show that Exeter has one of the highest percentages of overweight children in the country. Exeter has 18.2 percent of children at reception age who are overweight, compared to Devon with 15.4 percent and the national rates of 13.2 percent.
The reason for this high figure, according to health professionals, is the (more…)
Up to 2500 children may have been told that they are overweight, when in fact this is not the case. The problem has occurred due to a software error and affects up to a maximum of 2500 children in reception class and year six of primary school. Each year over a million children are measured as part of the National Child Measurement Programme, introduced to help fight the problem of child obesity.
As soon as the local authorities became aware that there was a problem with (more…)
A health insurance company in the US are giving youths in Florida the chance to win grants up to $1000 by using their knowledge and ideas to combat child obesity. The UnitedHealth Heroes programme is in it’s third year, formed by UnitedHealth Group and Youth Service America. To enter the competition, (more…)
Doctors in the United States and United Kingdom are demanding that screening be carried out for signs of heart disease in children. Child obesity is responsible for children as young as ten years old showing signs of heart disease. The doctors found children, overweight, suffering from stiffness of their arteries, which is a sign that heart disease will develop later in life.
Working at one of America’s top hospitals, the paediatricians are calling for (more…)