NEW YORK (Reuters) -- American children are not the only ones increasingly losing the struggle against obesity -- bad eating habits around the world are contributing to an "epidemic" of overweight youngsters, according to a new report.
And the long-term results of childhood obesity have nutrition experts worried. "What we clearly know is that childhood obesity is biologically and behaviorally related to adult obesity, and that serious health consequences for the child can result from being obese," explained Dr. Barry Popkin, University of North Carolina professor of nutrition and co-author of a study on overweight children conducted in five countries.
He says putting on excess weight in childhood "is associated with heart disease, diabetes, and other problems in adulthood." During early life, weight is most quickly put on at periods such as the third trimester of fetal development, early infancy, ages 5 to 7, and during the adolescent growth spurt.
Obesity is defined by the National Institutes of Health as body weight 20% or more than that recommended for a particular gender and age.
Popkin says one of the most disheartening findings was the rising incidence of obesity in tandem with the stunting of growth that comes from poor nutrition in early childhood.
"The major cause of stunting is a combination of inadequate breast feeding and inappropriate weaning, followed by the feeding of nutritionally inadequate, low protein foods such as rice, bananas, potatoes and water during the first 5 to 8 months of life," he explained. Those same foods may be full of starch-related calories, supplying unneeded fat while starving the body of the proteins and vitamins it needs for maximum growth.
Popkin stresses that stunting is a function of income, not genetics. "Stunting is mainly a problem of infant feeding," Popkin said. "For example, if you give a Guatemalan Indian infant a middle-class American diet and a healthy environment, he or she will grow like an American child."
Popkin's study found childhood growth stunting and obesity in all five of the countries studied:
-- In the U.S., 6% of low income children under the age of 5 have stunted growth, according to the report. Over 22% of American children are obese.
-- In Russia, 9% of 3-to-9 year olds were stunted, with almost half of them overweight. Popkin says that "only in the last half decade, most likely linked with the decline in public health services, including the provision of free or very inexpensive breast milk substitutes, has stunting emerged as a new nutrition problem (in Russia)."
-- In China, 26% of 3-to-9 year-old children were stunted in a 1993 government survey. Twenty-two percent of the stunted children were also overweight.
-- In South Africa, 28% percent of over 2,000 youngsters studied were stunted, with 13% of that number were obese.
-- And in Brazil, 15% of over 11,000 children surveyed showed stunted growth, with a small percentage overweight as well.
SOURCE: Journal of Nutrition (December 1996)
