The Secret of Preventing Obesity in Children

Obesity among the children of the United States and the United Kingdom is becoming a serious problem for both countries.

Because of this increasing problem British and U.S researchers carried out a study to discover the secret to healthy slim children. The secret, which really should not be a secret, is that all kids need to remain a healthy weight is a little bit of exercise each day, about 15 minutes to be exact.

Both children in the U.K and the U.S. are found to be eating poor diets and not doing anything active. Both of these are reasons for the now epidemic levels of obesity in children.

Children just have to partake in popular kids activities such as swimming, kicking a ball around, brisk walking and other sporting activities.

To find out the main cause of increased child obesity a study was carried out using 5,500 British children as subjects. The children used had agreed to be part of the study by wearing a device the measured motion, called an accelerometer. Children were also measured by advanced techniques to determine their fat mass. If a child had more than 10 percent fat mass they were considered obese.

The findings of this revealed that children who demonstrated the least amount of activity were more likely to be obese. It also revealed that short bursts of activity were the most beneficial form of activity for the children. The study also found that as the fat mass percent increased, the amount of physical activity of the child decreased.

The study found that children who were exercising for 15 minutes each day had a dramatically decreased chance of being obese, 50 percent less in fact. These short periods of moderate exercise seem to be the best way for kids to stay slim according to Andy Ness from the University of Bristol, "Our data suggest that higher intensity physical activity may be more important than total activity."