Puppy Fat Can Be An Obesity Indicator

Ukmedix has been studying research that claims that young children do not automatically get rid of puppy fat when the grow up. Apparently the idea that the fat will just fall off when the reach puberty is not true and could have harmful health consequences.

The research looked into the eating habits of children and their subsequent eating habits as adults and found a definite connection between puppy fat and obesity. The researchers said that it is important to remember that the eating patterns and habits of a child are set well before they get to puberty and start to decide what to eat themselves. This means that the bad habits that cause the puppy fat as a child may are likely to be the cause of obesity at an older age.

The study taken over a 60month period looked at nearly six thousand children. The researchers noted that kids with puppy fat did not often revert to normal body mass when they reached adolescence and that very few of them just shed the extra weight normally. The researchers felt that it was important to shed the myth that puppy fat was temporary and would be removed naturally by the body's growing process.

Being slightly overweight as a child can look very sweet and give them rosy cheeks which are seen as a sign of health, however the long term implications for being overweight as a child are very serious with many of them growing up to suffer from heart disease, diabetes and other obesity related health complications.

In the study that was conducted in South London it was shown that in the case of boys the ethnic group was insignificant to the research results. However in the case of girls it was found that they there were more cases of obesity overall and especially in black girls. In fact nearly 40% of black girls were seen to be either overweight or obese well above the rate for the white and Asian girls.

The study highlight the fact that more research should be done to look at the link between being overweight as a children and being obese as an adult and make more definite connections between that two.