Report: Fight fat even in toddlers, preschoolers
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WASHINGTON -- A food pyramid just for the under-2 set? Contrary to popular belief, children don't usually outgrow their baby fat -- and a new report urges steps to help prevent babies, toddlers and preschoolers from getting too pudgy too soon.
That's a growing problem: Already, 1 in 5 preschoolers -- 2- to 5-year-olds -- is overweight or obese.
Topping the list of proposed changes: better guidelines to help parents and caregivers know just how much toddlers should eat as they move from baby food to bigger-kid fare. And making sure preschoolers get at least 15 minutes of physical activity for every hour they spend in child care.
Thursday's recommendations, from the Institute of Medicine, aren't about putting the very young on diets. But those early pounds can lead to lasting bad effects on their health as children grow, the report says.
"It's a huge opportunity to instill good habits at a time when you don't have to change old ones," said Leann L. Birch, director of Pennsylvania State University's Center for Childhood Obesity Research, who chaired the institute's panel.
Consider: Babies drink milk until they're full and then turn away. But children as young as 2 or 3 are sensitive to portion size, important in not inadvertently training them to overeat. "If you give them larger portions, they eat more," Ms. Birch explained.
Pediatricians generally give fairly explicit directions about how to feed babies. And the nation's dietary guidelines include a special section for preschoolers, including information that a portion size generally is about 1 tablespoon of each food type per year of age.
But overall, those national guidelines are aimed at ages 2 and older -- though surveys show that even very young children eat too few of the fruits and vegetables they need. So the institute called upon the government to create consumer-friendly dietary guidelines for the period from birth to age 2. That would capture the "dramatic dietary transition that occurs, from consuming one single food to, by the time they're 2, ordering up things from McDonald's and, we hope, having also learned to eat a lot of healthy foods," Ms. Birch said.
That will be part of the discussion during the next dietary guidelines update in 2015, said Robert Post, deputy director of the Agriculture Department's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which oversees that process. But developing guidelines for these younger children is complex because their nutrition needs are based in part on the developmental stage, he cautioned.
First Published June 24, 2011 12:00 am
