The Blair government in the UK is trying to push school sports. However a recent study shows that it may not actually be worth it. Kids that run around like maniacs at school are just going to veg out when they get home and those that don’t run around outside of school hours.
Professor Terence Wilkin, the programme director, said the amount of exercise children get was genetically set, and had nothing to do with access to sports facilities.
“Those children who had little opportunity at school to undertake activity were bouncing around after school whereas those who’d had a lot of opportunity during the course of the school day settled down, and did relatively little,” he said.
“The most important thing (was) if you added the in-school activity to the out-of-school activity, they were exactly the same.”
That is not the only surprise. Professor Wilkin said children’s activity levels had no bearing on their body mass index - their risk of obesity.
“Even looking over a period of years, because we repeat these measures year by year in these children, we have been unable to show any relationship between the physical activity that a child undertakes and his BMI.”
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This comes on the back of the case of the near-100kg eight year old who authorities threatened to remove from the care of his mother. They didn’t remove him in the end but they are keeping an eye on him.
“Bacon. Mmmm… That’s my favorite. Um … chicken , steak, sausage,” the boy told the camera.
Firstly, there is significant evidence to suggest that obesity is, at least in part, due to genetics. That’s hardly the kid’s fault. However, who is cooking all this food for him? Eight year olds don’t cook food. He’ll eat what’s put in front of him. Sure, he may say he doesn’t like healthy food but when the choice is between starving and eating he’ll cave. That scenario is played out in every western household at some point or another. Some parents have a bit more patience than others.
Finally, it’s one of my pet theories that obesity is also due to economic factors. My extremely unscientific observations support this. Fast food and junk food is far more expensive than the equivalent amount of healthy food. (Compare McDonalds prices to a proper restaurant for example) People that are poorer can eat healthily less often than richer people, therefore they have an elevated risk of obesity. I saw the story of this kid on the news and he was certainly not living in Buckingham Palace - rather it did look like his family were doing it tough. Do we need to see the return of food stamps (ie. you must use this voucher to purchase $20 worth of fruit and vegetables)?