No exercise, more than couch, tied to fat in kids

Even if your child is active, a new study proves that it is important to further encourage him to exercise

For kids, time spent inactive seems less of a factor in higher body fat than does a lack of exercise, according to a new study.
Researchers found that the more minutes kids spent exercising at the pace of a fast walk each day, the lower their body fat percentage was. But the time they spent as couch potatoes made no difference, according to results published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Soyang Kwon, a pediatric researcher at Northwestern University in Chicago and her coauthors from the University of Iowa used data from a study in that state that followed kids of various ages from 2000 to 2009.
A group of 277 boys and 277 girls were measured at eight, 11, 13 and 15 years old for body composition and fat content using a precise X-ray technique originally developed to assess bone density. At each age, the exposure to radiation from the test was about equal to one transatlantic flight.
The same children wore an accelerometer, which measures body movement, for several days in a row sometime in the same year.
Even among kids who exercised the least, sitting didn't make much of a difference.
For the 13 year olds, those who sat less than, more than or equal to the average six and a half hours per day all had about the same body fat mass. But boys who spent the least amount of time in moderate to vigorous activity had about 11 pounds more body fat, on average, than those who exercised the most.
For 13 year old girls, the low level exercisers had about seven pounds more body fat than the exercisers. Results were similar in every age group, but the researchers did not record if each child was overweight or not.
In an earlier study, the same team of researchers found that even light intensity activity, like walking, every day, was linked to lower levels of fat in teens, but not young children.
But experts caution this doesn't mean kids should camp out in front of a screen for hours at a time. Previous research has shown a link between sedentary screen time and weight gain, probably because watching TV often goes hand in hand with snacking, Ulf Ekelund told Reuters Health.
"Parents should encourage their children to be physically active, the more the better," said Ekelund, who studies obesity risk factors in children at the Norwegian School of Sport Science in Oslo. "That might sound simple, but the execution isn't so simple sometimes."
"I support parents establishing rules that limit TV and videogames," but more is needed, said Pate, who was not involved in the new study. "If we get kids away from the screen that doesn't mean that they start to jump up and do vigorous activity."