The Archives of Disease in Childhood has published a study that found overweight youngsters are affected both physically and psychologically, with most negatively perceiving their bodies. This has led youngsters to suffer poor self-confidence and in turn lead them to be less likely to participate in group exercise, in particular, while at school.
For the last few decades child obesity levels have been increasing slowly, so an in-depth look at why the problem is occurring is needed in order to better understand the issue.
Instead of just increasing the exercise that young children participate in, it is now clear that general eating habits need to be looked at as well, in order to combat the problem.
The EarlyBird Diabetes study took a close look at 200 city school children over an 11 year time span. It found that increasing exercise had little effect on changing the weight of children that are obese. On the other hand, it did show that children who continued to put on weight were guilty of spending less time exercising.
Thus, the information suggests that the problem is getting children to eat healthy and exercise the first of which is the sticking point for most.
The news of the study comes at the same time that the government announced their funding withdrawal for the upcoming Change4Life health campaign. Prior to the cutback, £50m was invested in the initiative which was meant to help bring the obesity issue to the focus of people who live within the UK.
