A new study from the University of Oregon suggests that children who gain weight rapidly after age 2 will grow up to have heart problemns and become obese.
This study, which was carried out using Finnish medical records from the 1940s, suggests that when food is pushed on children over the age of 2 to help them grow, it tends to create more body fat without necessarily increasing height or muscle mass.
(If you are wondering why Finland, and why the 1940s, here's why. Researchers often use Scandanavian countries for studies because they tend to be homogenous populations. That is, there is not a lot of ethnic variation in the population. This makes comparing data from different cities and towns easier. The reason for using 1940s data is that the researchers wanted to know how these kids turned out when they grew up. You have to go back before 1950 to find children who are now well into middle age. It takes that long for heart disease to show up.)
I have long believed that it is wrong to force children to eat more than they want to. Many parents worry endlessly about their children not eating enough. But kids know when they are hungry. They can read the signals from their own bodies and will eat when they get hungry enough. Forcing children to eat who do not want to only makes them fatter, not healthier.
What should parents do, then? Rather than concentrating on the amount of food children eat, focus instead on the quality of the food they are eating. Providing healthy food options will make for healthy kids. Let the kids decide how much to eat.
The study was published in the October 27 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.