Study: Being overweight at early age strong predictor for obesity ...

A University of North Carolina Chapel Hill study found that overweight teens consume fewer calories than their healthy weight peers.

The article, which appeared in the Sept. 10 issue of Pediatrics, took its data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which was conducted between 2001 and 2008. The study focused on calorie-intake for ages 1 to 17.

Overweight girls younger than 7 and overweight boys younger than 10 consumed more calories than their counterparts in a healthy weight range. The data trend was less significant, study authors discovered, than what happened in the late childhood, early adolescent years. After age 7 for girls and age 10 for boys, heavier teens ate fewer calories than their healthy-weight counterparts.

The authors wrote that it's possible that kids who consume too many calories early in childhood become obese, and the extra weight becomes self-perpetuating.

Data from other studies backs up that assertion, said Dr. Cynthia Brownfield, a pediatrician for Heartland Health. Children who are overweight at age 2 are more likely to be obese as teenagers, and overweight teenagers are more likely to be heavyset adults.

But she sees the study more as an indicator of activity levels. The overweight kids and teens may be eating fewer calories, but their bodies handle those calories differently than the normal-weight kids and teens.

"The calories are doing more damage than their counterparts who are active, involved in sports," she says. "Those teenagers can consume a lot more calories because they have the muscle mass and the metabolic rate to handle those calories better."

Sedentary lifestyles lead to lower metabolic rates. Active teens have more muscle mass, which has been shown to burn calories even when the body is at rest, she says.

Muscle mass disintegrates over time as part of the body's aging process, so Dr. Brownfield stresses the importance of building it up early in life.

Weight issues only get harder as you get older, she says.

Jennifer Gordon can be reached

at jennifer.gordon@newspressnow.com.

Follow her on Twitter: @jjgordon. ___

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