Baby fat not as cute after all,its sign of obesity

Schools have banned cupcakes and issued obesity report cards. Just last month,Michelle Obamas campaign to end childhood obesity promised to get young people moving more and revamp school lunch.

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Schools have banned cupcakes and issued obesity report cards. Just last month,Michelle Obamas campaign to end childhood obesity promised to get young people moving more and revamp school lunch. But new research suggests that interventions aimed at school-aged children may be,if not too little,too late.

Evidence points to events very early in life during the toddler years,infancy and even before birth,in the womb that can set young children on an obesity trajectory that is hard to alter by the time theyre in kindergarten. The evidence is not ironclad,but it suggests that prevention efforts should start early.

Among the findings are these: The chubby baby who is growing so nicely may be growing too much for his or her own good,research suggests. Babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are at risk of becoming obese,even though the babies are usually small at birth. Babies who sleep less than 12 hours are at risk for obesity later. If they dont sleep enough and also watch two hours or more of TV a day,they are at even greater risk.

Some early interventions are already widely practiced. Doctors recommend that overweight women lose weight before pregnancy rather than after,to

cut the risk of obesity and diabetes in their children; breast-feeding is also recommended.

But weight or diet restrictions on young children have been avoided. It used to be kind of taboo to label a child under 5 as overweight or obese, said Dr Elsie M Taveras of Harvard Medical School.

Much of the evidence comes from a Harvard study led by Dr Matthew Gillman that has been following over 2,000 women and babies since early pregnancy. Like children and teens,babies and toddlers have been getting fatter. One in 10 children under age 2 are overweight. The percentage of children ages 2 to 5 who are obese increased to 12.4 per cent in 2006 from 5 per cent in 1980.

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Yet most prevention programs have shied away from intervening at very young ages,partly because the school system offers an efficient way to reach large numbers of children,and partly because the rate of obese teenagers is even higher than that of younger children 18 per cent.