Poor kids more likely to be fat - study
By Jane Bunce
December 20, 2006 03:00pm
MORE than one in five students in grade six are fat, with poor children most at risk, a new study says.
Researchers tested almost 200 children at 22 private and public primary schools across Adelaide.
They measured body shape - including weight, waist measurement and skin-fold tests - checked physical activity and television viewing hours, and reviewed diet over three 24-hour periods.
The researchers found a correlation between the children's socioeconomic status, measured by their postcode and their parents' level of education, and body shape.
The trend was more prevalent among girls.
The researcher's paper, published in the latest issue of the
International Journal of Obesity, said the association between socioeconomic status and obesity was a recent phenomenon and not present in data collected before 1980.
"This increasing association may in part be explained by increasing economic inequality,'' the authors, from Flinders University and the University of South Australia, said.
Poorer Australian adults are already known to be at higher risk of obesity as well as cancers, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, mental illness and diabetes.
The study found poorer boys were more likely to have a high-fat diet and a large waist measurement.
Previous studies have found children of mothers with lower educational levels and families in poorer neighbourhoods were more likely to eat a high-fat diet.
But the researchers were unable to work out if diet, exercise or television-watching was responsible for the higher levels of obesity among poorer girls, and suggested genes may be a factor.
"There is an urgent need to address the rift in children's `health-wealth' that parallels economic wealth,'' they said.
About 21 per cent of the boys were overweight and 2 per cent obese, while 16 per cent of girls were overweight and 4 per cent obese.
Almost half of the boys and more than 60 per cent of the girls exercised less than the recommended one hour a day, and about 40 per cent of both watched more than two hours' television a day.
Childhood Obesity 
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