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Predicting obesity at birth
New research might help parents and health care providers work together to predict and prevent childhood obesity.
Fri, Nov 30 2012 at 4:09 PM
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Obesity
Obesity

Photo: ChooseHealth.Utah.gov

Could future obesity be predicted at birth?  Some health experts think so.  And this research might help health care providers identify children who are at risk for childhood obesity before they even leave the hospital, stemming the otherwise skyrocketing numbers of kids affected by childhood obesity.
 
According to a new study published in PLos One, certain factors might be very good indicators of who will become obese and who will not.  They are: birth weight of the baby, body mass index of the parents, number of people in the family, whether the mother works outside the home, and whether the mother smoked during pregnancy.
 
The study's authors used these five factors to accurately predict obesity rates for 4,000 participants born in 1986 in Finland, the United States and Italy.
 
Of course, some of these factors just make logical sense.  Parents with a higher mass index are more likely to have children who are larger and thus more prone to obesity.  But what about the other factors: number of people in the family, prenatal smoking, and whether or not the mother works outside the home?  I was a little surprised not that these factors played a role in childhood obesity but that it was so large a role, whereas other factors such as parental stress did not play a role at all according to this study.
 
With childhood obesity rates tripling over the last three decades in the U.S., health experts and parents alike are scrambling to find tools to help kids stay healthy.  Hopefully, this research can be used to help identify babies that are risk for becoming obese so that parents and their health care providers can develop a proactive strategy for prevention.

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peekefanpage's picture
peekefanpage Dec 03 2012 at 1:42 PM
And what do parents do when they know their child is at risk for obesity? They should do what every parent should do: make sure their kids lead a healthy, informed lifestyle. Feeding children processed foods sets them up for increased addiction (including video gaming) and disease risks. One study found that when 3-year-olds ate a high fat/high sugar diet of predominantly processed foods, their IQs were lower at age 8 -- regardless of whether their diet had changed in the interim. Think about how
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much processed food we feed our kids -- ketchup alone has 4 grams of sugar per teaspoon! Limiting time with media and sending the kids out to play not only gets them amping up those good dopamine neurotransmitters that aid in learning, memory, attention, motivation and reward, it gets them away from food and hungry enough to eat the whole foods they need. The new science of epigenetics helps us to understand how any environmental cue – any person, place or thing – can influence how our genes are expressed. Even if our parents or grandparents lived long lives, when you continuously fall prey to hyperpalatable foods and the behaviors that support them (stress eating, for instance, or becoming one with your couch), this changes our gene expression. And this altered gene expression is passed on to our children. Our food addictions become theirs. The good news is that by controlling our weight, we also change how we express our genes. Your child doesn't have to continue that genetic disposition.
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tarrant's picture
Tarrant Dec 03 2012 at 3:28 PM
Welcome! You've given me a lot to think about here. It makes me wonder how many new parents give their young children processed food. (other than baby specific processed foods--do all of those new "veggie puff" types of toddler foods count in your opinion? I see those a lot when out and about in places with young children.) I didn't find myself trending toward processed foods until my children were older. (with the exception of the youngest who had a thing for canned chicken noodle soup at around
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age 4.)
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tarrant's picture
Tarrant Dec 01 2012 at 7:49 AM

The calculator seems to estimate a bit higher than I would have thought. What strategy do you think would work for prevention if they calculate at birth? I would be concerned that new parents might be so afraid of this information that they would start feeding their child in a restrictive way during those early pattern setting years...leading to greater disordered eating habits as teens and adults.

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