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April 21, 2005
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH
Canada's children ranked among world's fattest
By OLIVER MOORE
The Globe and Mail
New research shows that Canadian kids are near the top of a list no one wants to be on -- ranking among the fattest in the world.
The results stem from a massive study of more than 162,000 children aged 11, 13 and 15 from 34 countries, which showed that Canadian youths are pulling ahead of just about everyone else in the world.
Close to 20 per cent (19.3) of Canadian youths are overweight, higher than that for youths of every country studied except Malta, the United States and England. They are also more likely to be obese (4.1 per cent of those studied) than youth in every country except Malta, the U.S., Wales and Greenland.
The study, by Queen's epidemiologist Ian Janssen, finds young people in Canada are increasingly sedentary, and the effect is showing.
"Physical activity interventions should be a fundamental component of health campaigns aimed at reducing the global obesity epidemic," said Dr. Janssen, whose work is to appear in next month's issue of Obesity Reviews, a journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity.
The article notes that physical activity levels were lower and television viewing times tended to be higher in overweight compared with normal-weight youth.
The authors note that, in more than three-quarters of the countries studied, at least 10 per cent of the youth were overweight.
The study used international standards for body-mass index, which is an approximation of body fat, based on height and weight. Those with a BMI higher than 25 were classified as overweight, those over 30 were classified as obese.
Summing up his work with these thousands of youths, Dr. Janssen argues that "the adolescent obesity epidemic is a global issue."
That assessment was backed yesterday by Gerry Predy, chief medical officer for Edmonton's capital health region.
"The biggest problem is that fat kids grow up to be fat adults," he said. "Our future generations certainly are not going to be as healthy as current generations."
Dr. Predy said that there remain serious variables in weight problems across the country, with the effects worst in poor rural areas. Speculating about the inclusion of Greenland near the top of Dr. Janssen's list, he said that the same socio-economic conditions would likely be at play in Canada's north and that serious weight problems would probably be found there.
Oddly enough, Dr. Janssen's study also found a link between the frequency candy is eaten and the likelihood that a child will be overweight. But it's not the link you might expect.
Studying frequency, not volume, Dr. Janssen found that the more often youths ate candy the less likely they were to be heavy.
"This does not mean that eating sweets in large quantities is recommended for young people," he was quick to stress.
These results are certainly odd, Dr. Predy acknowledged, and shouldn't be taken too quickly to heart. "Certainly there are data to suggest that people who eat more frequently and eat less amounts each time they eat are less likely to be overweight or obese," he said cautiously.
John Spence, an associate professor of physical education and recreation at the University of Alberta, said he is surprised the study found no link between drinking pop and obesity.
"There has been some research to show that increases in soft drink consumption over the last 30 years may have been related to the subsequent increase in body weight that we are seeing in the population," Mr. Spence said from Edmonton, noting that overweight or obese kids tend to under-report caloric intake in such surveys.
And he said TV watching is but one of the sedentary pastimes contributing to the obesity epidemic, especially in North America, where a growing reliance on the automobile means fewer daily activities
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