Weird. A new study in the UK says there is no impact to exercise with childhood obesity. It suggests that genetics and diet are the prime factors.
"Those children who had little opportunity at school to undertake activity were bouncing around after school whereas those who'd had a lot of opportunity during the course of the school day settled down, and did relatively little," he said.
"The most important thing (was) if you added the in-school activity to the out-of-school activity, they were exactly the same."
That is not the only surprise. Professor Wilkin said children's activity levels had no bearing on their body mass index - their risk of obesity.
"Even looking over a period of years, because we repeat these measures year by year in these children, we have been unable to show any relationship between the physical activity that a child undertakes and his BMI."
If true, these findings cast serious doubts on the government's strategy to halt the increase in childhood obesity by the end of the decade, largely by encouraging physical activity.
Professor Wilkin said it was based on unproven prejudice - that today's children do not exercise as much as previous generations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6442293.stm
