'Grandparents potential heroes in the war on child obesity'

HAVING the emotional support of grandparents could be key to reducing the bulging girth of children, according to a new study.

Until now, research has focused on parents’ socioeconomic status as it relates to the problem, with papers indicating that having the resources to feed children healthily and enroll them in sports programmes makes a big difference.

Other aspects regarding the family have not been investigated as thoroughly, according to the study in which researchers worked with 39 children aged three to four who had already received treatment for obesity.

The research team began by assessing the children’s parents for socioeconomic status by means of education and income levels, career, living situation and savings.

Next, parents answered questions about the support they received from their own parents in the domains of domestic chores, financial and emotional assistance.

Receiving emotional support from one’s own parents had a protective effect against obesity in the third generation, according to the study, which was published in the journal Paediatric Obesity.

“Greater social support for families with small children could help alleviate stress in parents, who will thereby be in a better position to make better food choices,” says Paulina Nowicka, Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

In February, a study of indigenous people in Amazonia determined that grandparents’ role in family nutrition is key, and quantified it.

“The results support the theory that grandparents are key to our relatively long childhood and long lifespan, which are a big part of what makes us human,” says lead author Paul Hooper, an anthropologist at Emory University in the US. “Their efforts have likely been underwriting human society for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Hooper and his team spent five years observing 239 Tsimane families spawning eight villages and concluded that parents contributed the largest amount of calories to their family unit, followed by grandparents.

We mature later and have a longer post-reproductive life than other mammals and intergenerational relations reinforce the distinctively human characteristics, note the researchers. — Relaxnews