The shape of a five-year-old child may be an indication of what his weight will be. A recent study showed that what a five-year-old child looks like may be an indicator of what his weight will be when he approaches his teenage years. The researchers analyzed data from more than 7,700 children, whose weight and height were determined upon entering the nursery school in 1998, and upon reaching the age of 14 years, noting that 12.4 percent of the participating children were obese, and 14.9 percent of them were overweight. The researchers observed that half of the children who are obese at the age of 14 are in the 14.9 percent group.
The research finds that a large part of the risk of obesity is determined at the age of five, and that efforts to combat childhood obesity may need to focus on young people who suffer from overweight at an early childhood.
The researchers believe that fighting childhood obesity is a joint effort with the home, which has a duty to monitor the child''s diet and engage in physical activities that may contribute to reducing the possibility of accumulation of fat and their suffering from obesity with age.
