Children's Health & Fitness ? A Reseacher Weighs In On Childhood ...

June 26th, 2012 by Len Saunders

From The Royal Gazzette?..

The most important tools in combating childhood obesity?

Positive school attitudes and a physical education programme are vital, according to American researcher Margaret Demment.

The doctoral student at Cornell University will speak on childhood obesity this week, part of a lecture organised by the Bermuda Diabetes Association.

?I came into the nutrition programme at Cornell interested in the influences of food on the health of individual communities and families,? said Ms Demment, whose dissertation focuses on obese and overweight children in rural and urban New York.

?I was looking at the broad spectrum. The more I observed the more I learned how important an issue obesity is for [the United States]. I became specifically interested in preventing obesity in childhood.?

Research showed trends suggested a strong correlation between a family?s socioeconomic status and childhood obesity, particularly minority children, she said.

?What I wanted to look at was how changes in low income over a child?s lifetime impacted their risk of obesity. I wanted to look at children who were downwardly mobile.?

The researcher found children whose parents had lost jobs or divorced were at a greater risk of obesity than they had been before crisis hit the family.

?There is still a lot of research that can be done to look at connections between low income and overweight and obesity,? she said. ?It could be that parents are more stressed for time and resources. It could be that the easier and cheaper food options tend to have a lower nutrient quality and are more calorie-dense.?

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Entry Filed under: Health / Fitness Articles

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