Weight gain is a numbers game. If you eat more calories than the calories you burn through activity, you'll gain weight. But why children gain too much weight and become obese is not simple. Instead of a single cause for childhood obesity, a collection of factors come together to bring about the excessive weight gain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention divides causes of childhood obesity into three categories: genetic, behavioral and environmental factors.
Genetic Factors
According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, obesity tends to run in families. If a parent is obese, his children are 50 percent more likely to be obese than children of a non-obese parent. If both parents are obese, their children are 80 percent more likely to be obese. However, this is not clear evidence of a genetic cause of obesity.
Some people, including children, do have a genetic predisposition to gain weight. However, genetics alone is responsible for childhood obesity only in rare cases, such as children afflicted with Prader-Willi syndrome. Most of the time, excessive calorie intake coupled with limited physical activity accompanies the propensity to gain weight.
Behavioral Factors
The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine discuss several key eating behaviors that may contribute to childhood obesity in the book, "Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in Balance." For example, drinking sugary beverages and eating larger portion sizes both may lead to excessive calorie intake.
Because being active burns calories, physical activity behaviors also affect the weight gain of obese children. The CDC reports that children are spending less time being physically active at school and that, on average, children spend about three hours a day in front of a television or computer screen, which can lower their metabolisms and also promote snacking on unhealthy foods.
Environmental Factors
The availability or lack of healthful foods to children holds an integral role in the development of childhood obesity. A number of factors affect this, including food decisions of parents, cost of different foods, the availability of supermarkets and fast-food restaurants in their neighborhoods, and the types of foods served and sold in schools.
The availability of safe areas in which kids can be physically active is also a vital environmental aspect of childhood obesity. The book "Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in Balance" discusses how moving to the suburbs--where long roads may not have any sidewalks at all and people have to drive to stores--has decreased the activity level of many Americans, including children. In an article published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers Babey, Hastert and Brown found that teens who lived in areas with safe parks were more active.
References
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Childhood Overweight and Obesity Contributing Factors
- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: Obesity in Children and Teens
- JAMA; Prevalence of High Body Mass Index in US Children and Adolescents, 2007-2008; Cynthia Ogden, Margaret Carroll, Lester Curtin, Molly Lamb, Katherine Flegal; January 2010
- "Preventing Childhood Obesity-Health in the Balance"; Institute of Medicine; 2005
- American Journal of Preventive Medicine; Physical Activity Among Adolescents. When Do Parks Matter? S.H. Babey, T.A. Hastert, H. Yu, E.R. Brown; April 2008
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