The deterioration in the healthy behavior like good eating habits and physical activeness that often occurs in the growing children frequently contributes to the instances of childhood obesity. The possibility of this behavioral deterioration is prevalent as per one of the studies that are published in Jan/Feb 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. According to researchers these behavior often undergo a change for the worse in the children during the transition from pre-school age to the school age. The diet pattern, thus many a times do not meet the current recommendations and may contribute to the childhood obesity.
The researchers interviewed the parents to find out their perception of the kid’s behavior and noted that parents of pre-school children (2 to 5 years) had a better perception of the eating behavior and physical activity levels of their kids as compared to the parents of school-aged children (6 to 12 years). The parents of the older children felt that their children had been following a less healthy diet and leisure-time activities.
For the study, researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Brown University Medical School surveyed mothers of 174 children aged between 2 to 12 years. The parent filled in a questionnaire regarding eating and leisure time activities of the children and also provided child’s weight and height data for the records.
The findings of the exercise reveled that the older children were restoring to intake of sweetened fatty drinks instead of low-calorie drinks and also had higher consumption of salty and sweetened snacks. Most of the parents of the older lot reported that they were having dinner together less frequently which could be a pointer to a less healthy choice of food by these kids. On the other hand parents of the younger children reported their kid an average or above average active child as compared to their peers. The time spent on watching TV was also reported to be higher among the older kids. In all the study pointed out to the fact that the eating behavior and the physical activity behavior changes for worse as a child grows.
"Although preschool-aged children engaged in more healthful behaviors according to parent recall, the preschool-aged children only met two dietary recommendations, fruit and low-fat dairy intake. All other parent-reported eating and leisure-time activity patterns did not meet current recommendations," states Dr. Hollie A. Raynor, Department of Nutrition, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in her report and adds, "Surprisingly, other than fast-food consumption, this study found few parent-reported eating and leisure-time behaviors related to weight status, which may be a consequence of the overall poor diet quality and relative inactivity reported in this diverse sample. Thus, interventions designed to help children meet dietary and leisure-time activity recommendations should begin by assisting parents with preschool-aged children in developing skills to provide the structure and the environment necessary for their young children to develop healthful lifestyles."
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