A parent’s struggle with stress or depression can lower a child’s quality of life - and it could hinder an overweight youngster’s attempts to lose weight, too, University of Florida researchers say.

Shape Up Somerville: Eat Smart. Play Hard.â„¢ a community-based environmental change intervention to prevent obesity in culturally diverse, early elementary school children reduced weight gain over one school year. The multi-faceted program was designed and implemented by researchers from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and the Tufts University School of Medicine in close collaboration with the community.

Obese and overweight children increase their food intake by more than 100% after watching food advertisements on television; a study by the University of Liverpool psychologists has shown.

A RAND Corporation study issued today says school playgrounds and athletic facilities can be important tools in the fight against childhood obesity, but many are locked and inaccessible to children on weekends - especially in poor and minority neighborhoods.

Four-year-old girls are six times more likely to have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 30 than they were 20 years ago and ten-year-olds are five times more likely, according to research published in the April issue of Acta Paediactrica.

Childhood obesity is increasing among the general population in Canada, but the statistics are even more alarming among First Nations, Inuit and Mйtis children. In a study published recently in the American Journal of Public Health, University of Alberta researchers found that up to 65 per cent of Cree preschoolers in northern Quebec communities were overweight or obese.

The answer to childhood obesity could be as simple as encouraging kids to kick a football around for 15 minutes a day