Childhood obesity (肥胖) isn't only caused by over eating. A lot of environmental and lifestyle variables—such as skipping breakfast, irregular sleeping patterns and less sleep time—also contribute towards this disturbing trend, says a new study.
According to the study conducted by University College London's researchers, children who skip breakfast and sleep less are more likely to have bigger appetites and tend to consume more energy-rich foods throughout the day, leading to excessive weight gain. The team also found that smoking habit of mothers during pregnancy (怀孕）is also one of the contributory factors for a child being overweight.
Interestingly, these results challenge the conventional belief that over-eating is main cause of increasing obesity rates among children. In addition, factors like watching too much television, consuming sugary drinks, eating fruits and introducing solid food sooner don't certainly lead to childhood obesity.
The researchers used data from a multi-disciplinary research project that tracks the lives：of children from 19, 244 families across the UK, born from September 2020 to January. 2021. After analyzing the data, they found that in UK, 83. 3%of new babies had non-overweight and stable. BMI (身体质量指数). Only 1% had a mildly increasing BMI, while another 2. 5% tended to have a sharply increasing BMI. However, due to poor lifestyle choices and environmental factors, 6% of the children were already overweight when they were three years old.
The study authors concluded that modifying（更改） a child's environment early in life can go a long way in reducing their chances of gaining abnormal weight, which can also affect their health in later years.
The researchers recommended that dealing with the childhood obesity calls for a mixture of preventive actions, for example, creating awareness among the families around the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and also instructing and supporting parents throughout the pregnancy, and even before and after it.
