Single kids more prone to obesity

Parents of single kids should be careful as a study has revealed that a single child has a more than 50 percent more likelihood of being overweight or obese than kids with siblings. The study was done on 12,700 children in eight European countries, including Sweden.

This research was done under the framework of the European research project Identification and prevention of dietary and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants (IDEFICS), with emphasis on focusing on diet, lifestyle and obesity and their impacts on children aged between two to nine years.

The children's BMI (body mass index) was linked to a parental questionnaire that took into account the children's eating habits, TV viewing habits and amount of outdoor play time, says a report published in the journal Nutrition and Diabetes.

The study further says that single kids play outside rarely, live in households with lower levels of education more often, and most of the times have televisions in their bedrooms, said study co-author Monica Hunsberger, researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

But even after taking these things into consideration, the link between singleton status and overweight is strong. Being an only child appears to be a risk factor for overweight independent of the factors we thought might explain the difference, a Gothenburg statement has quoted Hunsberger as saying.

Lauren Lissner, researcher at the Sahlgrenska has said that the fact that single children are more prone to obesity may be due to differences in individual family environment and family structure that we were not able to measure in sufficient detail.

More than 22 million children in Europe are supposed to be overweight. The study also shows that obesity among children in general is three times more common in southern countries such as Italy, Spain and Cyprus than in Sweden and other northern countries.

--with inputs from IANS