In a bold move, designed to deal with our current child obesity crisis, a new book has suggested parents must adopt sneaky tactics when it comes getting their kids fit.
"A sneaky fit kid can burn an extra 400 calories per day," claims Missy Chase Lapine, the co author of the book; ‘Sneaky Fitness: Fun, Foolproof Ways to Slip Fitness into Your Child's Everyday Life’. The book is aimed at parents and schools. It contains up to 100 fitness strategies, designed for toddlers.
Tips include handy games, exercises and nutritional advice. It is the fourth book in its series and details what Lapine brands as a ‘sneaky lifestyle’.
"This whole (childhood) obesity epidemic can be obliterated by the sneaky fitness method," she added.
She also highlights the fact that healthy diets are only half the battle for parents. She believes that children need to exercise regularly. In addition to this, she feels that too many children are leading sedentary lifestyles.
The book has been released at a time when official stats would appear to indicate, that child obesity rates in the US have more than tripled since the 1970s. Paediatricians however, have been reluctant to screen for obese children, due to a lack of any kind of plan, for actually helping solve the problem in the first place.
According to the U.S centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 17% of children in the US are obese. We can practically mirror these figures with stats from the UK as 19% of boys and 22% of girls (aged 2-15) here are obese.
How are things shaping up for adults?
According to a government based report, 33% of men and 28% of women will be seriously obese by 2010.
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