Letting preschoolers learn poor eating habits and become couch potatoes could ruin their life.

That warning was issued to a packed Massey University lecture theatre by US academic Dr Lynn Moore.

She showed inactive children with poor diet often end up with metabolic syndrome – a cluster of conditions linked to obesity, hypertension and diabetes.

An increasing number will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in their teenage years.

“It’s tragic is what it is,” she says.

“This is looking like it’s going to be the first generation whose life span is shorter than their parents because of effects linked with obesity.”

Ms Moore was a director of the internationally renowned Framinghams Children’s Study.

It measured the effect eating habits and activity had on the body fat of children from preschool to year 1.

Less active kids who ate low levels of fruit and vegetables and dairy were found to be most at risk of obesity.

Those kids are unlikely to change their eating habits and get healthy as they head into adulthood, says Ms Moore.

“People do stick with the eating patterns they learn when they’re young,” she says.

“That’s when you’re getting a taste for things. (…)

The problem these days is few people, including parents, are teaching kids about good and bad foods, she says. (…)

Source: Auckland stuff.co.nz, New Zealand
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/sundaystartimes/auckland/4330992a6497.html