A new study suggests that children gain more fat mass during the summer, but that kids’ busy school days help them stay fit.
The findings don’t reveal what’s behind the out-of-school weight gain, but the researchers speculate it’s because the summer months lack the structure of the school year with all its activities and daily comings and goings, Health news reported.
Doug Downey, an Ohio State University sociologist who co-authored the study, said that for many youngsters, the lazy days of summer may offer plenty of free time to eat snacks and lounge about watching TV or playing video games.
He said the study seems to point to the need for parents to be more involved, as well as raising the idea of a longer school year and more after-school programs to keep children active. And schools should continue their efforts to promote good health, he said. “Trying to improve the quality of school lunches, getting the soda machines out of schools those are still good approaches. But clearly the source of children’s obesity problems lie outside of the school,” Downey said.
The university sociologists discovered that the youngsters’ BMIs increased on average more than twice as much during summer break compared with the school year. That increase was even greater among black and Hispanic students and kids who were overweight at the start of kindergarten.
Once kids were back in school, however, the monthly growth rate of their BMIs fell, and the growth rate gap between the overall population and the minority and overweight groups shrank, the researchers found.
Betsy A Keller, a professor of exercise and sport sciences at Ithaca College in New York, said the pattern seen in the study’s snapshot of the kids’ kindergarten year, summer break and first grade is “irregular” and does not mesh with kids’ normal growth in height and weight.
Keller said it clearly points to a summer gain in fat mass, although she said data from later school years is needed to see if that trend continues.
Overall, she said the findings point to the need for parents to become actively involved in encouraging their kids to develop healthy habits even as the push continues for schools to focus more on those same goals.
