Poor Diet and Not Less Physical Activity Can Cause Childhood Obesity, Study

Childhood obesity is a serious condition among children and adolescents in which doctors recommend improving their diet and adding physical activities to their daily habits to maintain a healthy body.

According to a new study, variation in consumption of market-acquired foods outside the traditional diet and not the total burned calories a day is related to the body fat of children in Amazonian Ecuador. Researchers led the study from Baylor University that offers insight into global childhood obesity.

Assistant Professor Samuel Urlacher, Ph.D., the study lead author, said that their findings suggest that Amazonian children who eat high-calorie market foods, but not those who do not engage in physical activities, have more body fat.

The researchers published their study in The Journal of Nutrition, the American Society for Nutrition's flagship journal.

Diet Change Drives Global Childhood Obesity

The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration data showed that from 4% in 1975, childhood obesity has risen to 18% as of 2016. That represents a global health crisis because overweight children often remain so when they become adults, which means they also have a shorter life expectancy through developing various non-communicable diseases.

The researchers investigated how a change of diet could influence the transition to becoming overweight or obese. They collected data from two groups of children, one living in the rural area and the peri-urban Shuar children.

The rural children do not usually have access to the market, and their subsistence-based lifestyle is mostly based on hunting, fishing, foraging, and small-scale horticulture, according to EurekAlert. Meanwhile, Shuar children in the peri-urban setting have more access to the market, roads, hospitals, stores, restaurants, and other market amenities.

They measured both groups' physical activity using wearable devices and immune activity by using biomarkers they got from the blood the participants' blood samples. They also recorded the daily energy expenditure of the children.

At the end of their experiment, they found that peri-urban children have 65% more body fat than rural children, with over one-third of them being described as overweight. Also, children in peri-urban eat four times as much market-acquired food compared to rural children.

Furthermore, researchers recorded similar levels of physical activity in both groups. But peri-urban children spend 108 calories per day less than rural children. Therefore, the researchers conclude that variation in market foods and not daily expenditure is linked to higher children's body fat.

These findings support the idea that diet change among children is likely a dominant factor in driving the increasing cases of childhood obesity and not physical activity.

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Childhood Obesity

According to the Mayo Clinic, several factors cause childhood obesity. The two main contributors are too little activity and too many calories from food and drinks. However, genetic factors may also play a significant role.

But the recent study from the researchers of Baylor University points more at the poor diet being the most risk factor underlying childhood obesity, Urlacher said.

However, that does not mean that physical activity no longer plays a crucial role. It remains an important factor in becoming fit and preventing oneself from becoming overweight or obese. Experts caution people to look out for their diet, especially children, because it appears to be most directly related to children's body fat and long-term energy balance.