As summer begins, guess what? The child you assume will be running free, will actually be falling out of shape as summer doldrums replace stepped-up PE activities and a somewhat stricter diet enforced during the school years.
At least that's the statistic, with apologies to families that plan to retrace the Lewis & Clark Trail, climb Half Dome, or spend a summer at the beach playing games, swimming and surfing.
Sociologists at two universities - Indiana and Ohio State - have determined that young children, already at risk for obesity, accumulate fat during the summer months. "This suggests that instead of thinking of schools as the problem, schools appear to be part of the solution," states Indiana University-Bloomington professor Brian Powell. He co-authored the study with three others, studying the BMI growth rates of 5,380 kindergartners and first-graders nationwide.
BMI calculates a person's weight and height and provides an indicator of body fatness.
The study determined that the BMIs of children increased, on average, more than twice as much during summer breaks, with Latino and African-American students most at risk.
The study appeared in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health (ajph.org.)
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