Obesity Facts and Information

3 Simple Steps Can Cut Childhood Obesity

A new study finds three household routines lower the risk of obesity in children: having family dinners, getting enough sleep and limiting weekday TV time. Four-year-olds in homes that followed these practices had a nearly 40 percent lower prevalence of obesity than children who did none of these things. Of course childhood obesity - a soaring phenomenon [...]

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Federal Panel Urges Obesity Screening for Kids Ages 6 and Up

A federal panel of health experts has issued new recommendations encouraging U.S. doctors to screen children aged 6 and older for obesity, and to offer them a referral to intensive weight management programs when necessary. The recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) update those issued in 2005. At that time, the group said [...]

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Missing DNA can promote childhood obesity

Some children get severely obese because they lack particular chunks of DNA, which kicks their hunger into overdrive, researchers report. The British researchers checked the DNA of 300 children who’d become very fat, on the order of 220 pounds by age 10. They looked for deletions or extra copies of DNA segments. They found evidence that several [...]

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Kids should get moving to avoid obesity

Vigorous exercise may be an especially good way to keep kids lean, but sitting around, in and of itself, doesn’t appear to have a major role in making them fat, new research shows. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of reasons to avoid too much sedentary “screen time,” Dr. Ulf Ekelund of the MRC Epidemiology Unit in [...]

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Should Parents of Overweight Kids Lose Custody?

Should morbidly obese children be taken from their parents? That’s the question an increasing number of countries are grappling with amid the Western world’s obesity epidemic. The latest case to make headlines concerns a Scottish couple who lost custody of two of their six children on the basis of what was, their lawyer claims, a failure [...]

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