The number of overweight children is soaring, mainly due to lack of exercise. But doesn't food play a part too? Mary Whiting explains how to avoid excess calories
It's simple,' someone once told me. 'Fat children should diet!' Actually, it's not that simple. Quite apart from the risk of stigmatising individual children, 'dieting' is not the answer unless it is a medical necessity.
Essentially, a slimming diet is a semi-starvation diet - if you stayed on it long enough you would waste away. It is not at all the health-building diet needed by growing children. On the contrary, children need to eat well in order to get the nutrients they need and to give them enough energy to enjoy playing and running about. It's a circle: children need plenty of exercise to strengthen developing bones and muscles, to burn off excess calories, and to work up a good appetite for the next meal. Sedentary children may not be eating enough to supply all their nutritional needs.
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