Children cannot be held responsible for their own diets

According to a team of researchers all you need to do to predict future obesity related disease or premature sudden death in teenagers is to look at a photo of their face! Using high school yearbook photos the researchers worked out a scale to evaluate facial characteristics and therefore estimate body weight. Using over 3,000 randomly picked photos from over 10,000 children who graduated from high school in Wisconsin in 1957 they came up with their research findings.

Eric Reither who is a Utah State University demographer and who led the study said that those children who were overweight in high school had a three times bigger likelihood of becoming obese when they reached their early fifties and obviously this came with a number of associated health problems. The overweight adolescents were also twice as likely to have died prematurely and four times more likely to have died as a result of cardio disease when compared to normal weight individuals.

Reither said that his research explained the seriousness of childhood weight problems and how they could impact in later life. Along with his research colleagues Robert Hauser and Karen Swallen he spoke about the need for reduced calorie intake and for regular physical exercise to prevent children becoming overweight.

He said that it was important that excess weight in children and teenagers should not be looked at as being “temporary” or “harmless” because it almost invariably led to increased illness and poorer quality of life in adulthood.

The research which has been written up in the scientific journal Demography should make parents and those responsible for the diets of children sit up and take note. Children cannot be held responsible for their own diets and therefore it is imperative that those who care about them take affirmative steps to make sure they don’t send children to an early grave by feeding them irresponsibly.