SA kids following fat Americans

2003-09-11 08:45

Antoinette Pienaar

Pretoria - South Africa's children are becoming so fat these days that clothing manufacturers can't make clothes according to children's dummies in use for the past 10 to 20 years.

Dr Tessa van der Merwe, an obesity expert at the University of the Witwatersrand, says manufacturers now have to take children's bigger bottoms and stomachs into consideration.

"We can't say anymore that a child should be left alone, because it will outgrow puppy fat. A child between the age of three and five has a 62% chance of being overweight if one of its parents is obese," she warned.

Doctors measure a person' obesity by establishing a person's body-weight index. His weight in kilogrammes is divided by his length in meters.

The World Health Organisation says the ideal index count is between 18.5 and 24.9 and a person shouldn't put on more than 5kg later in life.

Many just sit watching soapies

About 37% of children in the United States are overweight or inclined to fatness. In Europe, the figure is 20% and in China 10%.

Van der Merwe says South African children are following hot on the heels of the Americans.

She says children are using their free time totally differently to the way they did a few decades ago, when they played outside much more.

Children nowadays are being ferried everywhere by their parents because of the crime situation or they stay indoors after school.

Teenage girls, especially, spend between two and three hours during the afternoons watching soap operas on television.

After work, their overworked parents stop at fast-food take-away outlets to buy the evening meal.

In some communities, overweight is also linked to stunted growth.

An article published in the Journal of Nutrition in 1996, said 28% of a group of 2 000 South Africans taking part in a study were too short for their age group. About 13% of the short children were obese.

Van der Merwe said there were 200 million people worldwide in 1995 who were obese and that figure increased to 350 million last year.

- Beeld