It’s important for kids to develop healthy eating and exercise habits so that those habits persist into adulthood. Yet more and more children are becoming overweight and obese, which can cause diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and other chronic conditions long before they stop needing a pediatrician.
There have been lots of programs aimed at getting children to be more active, but they haven’t been all that effective. Researchers in the United Kingdom theorized that one of the reasons those programs might not be working might be that children (and their parents) believe that they are already active enough. This might also be complicated by the feeling that exercise is only necessary if you need to lose weight. How Much Exercise Are Your Kids Getting, Really?
