Children may gain more weight during summer vacation, experts warn
Global News
As school lets out across the country, experts are concerned about pitfalls such as a lack of sleep and unhealthy food habits that will lead to higher obesity rates among children.
As families dive into summer break in Canada, experts are warning that the combination of unhealthy eating, increased screen time and reduced outdoor activities can contribute to potential weight gain among kids during this time.
Childhood obesity in Canada has nearly tripled over the past 30 years due to genetics, an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and more accessibility to processed food, explained Dr. Mélanie Henderson, a pediatric endocrinologist at CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal.
And the summertime can exasperate these problems, she warned.
“With respect to summertime, the fact that we break our routine makes it more difficult to adhere to healthy lifestyle patterns,” she said.
“There have been some studies that have demonstrated that children will have lesser healthy lifestyle habits in the summertime, will gain more weight during that period, and ultimately that will be more difficult to break that cycle. So absolutely, summertime can be a period of concern.”
A 2014 study out of Harvard School of Public Health looked at data from studies from more than 10,000 kids aged five to 12 in the United States, Canada and Japan between 2005 and 2013. Although this is not the most recent study to look at weight gain and children during the summer, it is one of the largest research projects that examines the topic.
The researchers found that school-aged children may gain weight at a faster rate during the summer compared with the school year.
“The studies reviewed suggested many potential mechanisms for accelerated summer weight gain. Such mechanisms included decreased physical activity, increased sedentary behaviours, increased access to unhealthy snacks, unstructured schedules and boredom, less self-monitoring, irregular sleep patterns and less access to healthier meals through school breakfast and lunch during the summer relative to the school year,” the Harvard School researchers stated.