The thickest children in Europe live in Italy

Despite the Mediterranean diet: Europe's biggest children live in Italy

05/31/2012

While recently the British children took first place in terms of overweight, now the small Italians occupy the top position in Europe. More than 40 percent of two- to ten-year-olds are therefore overweight or even obese. That resulted in a European study. The causes are to be found in a beauty ideal, lack of sleep and the fear of crime.

Instead of Mediterranean fare pizza, pasta and ice cream
Despite the varied, healthy offer of the Mediterranean cuisine, which includes, for example, fresh vegetables and fruits, fish and olive oil, Italian children seem to prefer pizza, pasta and ice cream. At the urging of Italy, Morocco, Greece and Spain, the so-called Mediterranean Diet 2010 was even recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

More than 40 percent of two- to ten-year-olds in Italy suffer from overweight or obesity. Even her peers in Greece, Cyprus and Spain know the problem. Whether on the beach in Palermo, in Rome or on Lake Garda - everywhere you can see small overweight children with sweets in their hands or even a chip bag in a stroller. "The surveys over the past ten or twenty years show that we have higher case numbers of childhood obesity in Southern Europe," reports Wolfgang Ahrens, head of the Idefics study at the Bremen Institute for Epidemiology and Prevention Research. Since 2006, researchers in Europe have been studying children's diseases due to their lifestyle, as part of the EU-funded research framework program. The largest long-term study on dietary health disorders in children in the EU examined 16,225 children.

In Sweden, Mediterranean cuisine is more popular than on the Mediterranean
"The data we have collected suggests that the Mediterranean is moving north," explains Ahrens. So Swedish children eat "Mediterranean" than their peers on the Mediterranean.

In Italy, the government now wants to respond to the known problem. With the comic character "Captain KUK" children are to be animated to eat fruit and vegetables. Health Minister Renato Balduzzi also wants to tackle the problem financially. In the future, there should be an additional tax on sweetened lemonade drinks. Thus, on the one hand, young people should be prevented from buying unhealthy drinks and, on the other hand, should be wandering into the damp health insurance funds. The minister said that this additional tax should "draw public attention to a topic that is not seen enough in the families. Half of our children consume too much carbonated and sugared drinks. "But critics say that Balduzzi is merely using the problem to reach the citizen even deeper.

Moppel figure as a beauty ideal for Italian children
Italian mothers are often said to be very worried about their offspring. This can have a negative impact on nutrition. "There was the beauty ideal that children should be a little proper. The idea of ​​what a healthy child looks like is still going on, "explains Ahrens. In addition, many Italian women do not let their children play on the street because of the chaotic traffic situation in some cities and high crime rates. Instead of romping outside, the little ones sit in front of the TV or computer, as they almost everywhere in Europe, while they eat something by the way. "Children who watch a lot of television feed differently and prefer unhealthy food," reports Ahrens. In part, the lack of consequence is due to the unhealthy diet of the children. Many parents prefer to give their kids a chocolate bar on the fly rather than offering them fruit that has to be washed and cut before. It is also a problem that many Italian parents and grandparents just could not say no, reports a mother. The most consistent way to comply with the study, the food rules in Sweden.

Another cause of the overweight of many Italian children could be lack of sleep. The offspring are much later in bed in the Mediterranean than, for example, in northern Europe, which can lead to weight gain. "There is a clear relationship between sleep duration and overweight. The metabolism is changing, insulin sensitivity is decreasing, and the risk of diabetes is increasing. "According to experts, the risk of overweight primary school children is twice as high if they sleep less than nine hours compared to children who sleep 11 hours. The result of the study is no surprise: "The Italian children sleep the shortest of all, the Swedish the longest."

Many parents lack the awareness of the overweight of their children
Since the number of overweight children has risen steadily in recent years, the Integrated Research and Treatment Center (IFB) Obesity Diseases, the pediatric network CrescNet and the Department of Paediatrics at Leipzig University Hospital recently conducted a joint study on this topic. The frightening result: Often the parents are not aware of the overweight of the children.

The researchers interviewed a total of 433 families with 241 overweight children between the ages of four and seventeen, who participated in an overweight prevention program, and 192 children who were not in an appropriate program. It turned out that the mothers and fathers whose children were "only" overweight, much more often refused to participate in the prevention program than their parents' children were already obese, as stated in the Communication from the Integrated Research and Treatment Center (IFB). Obesity disorders was called. Obviously obesity in children is often not considered a serious problem. (Ag)

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