15 minutes of football 'can halve obesity risk' - nonsensical claim made by University of Bristol team. Professor Andy Ness.

15 minutes of football 'can halve obesity risk'

Extracts:

"Kicking a football around for just 15 minutes a day can halve a child's risk of becoming obese, a study has found. Even small increases in daily activity, such as walking to school instead of going by car, could have impressive long-term results, researchers say.

The official advice is that children need an hour of moderate to vigorous exercise a day - long enough to put off many parents who do not have the time to take their children to the sports centre. But a quarter-of-an-hour's kickaround may be all that is needed, according to the University of Bristol team."

"Professor Andy Ness, of the University of Bristol, said: "It has been really surprising to us how even small amounts of exercise appear to have dramatic results. If you say to parents they have got to take their children for an hour-long early morning run, they will throw up their hands and say it is impossible. But if you say kicking a ball around for 15 minutes or going for a quick swim is all that is needed then they may well feel that is manageable. And it is probably good for the family, too."

Professor Ness said girls were no more likely to be obese than boys and that their lower activity levels indicated they were using "other strategies" to stay slim, such as "dietary restraint". But claims by rival researchers that activity levels of children were genetically pre-determined were wide of the mark."

The claim that "Kicking a football around for just 15 minutes a day can halve a child's risk of becoming obese" is completely untrue. One of the problems with this sort of study is that the researchers confuse cause with effect. When children have become overweight - usually by eating salty food - exercise is much more difficult and tiring for them so they tend to do less. - Doing less exercise is not the cause of the overweight, but the result of it.

When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume and other fluid retention results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.

Because children have much smaller bodies than adults it would be best if they had no more than half as much salt as adults. Most children, however, have much more than this because they eat so many snacks and instant foods. Just one cheeseburger, for instance, contains almost double the recommended daily salt maximum for children. There are high amounts of salt in packet soups, instant noodles, ketchup and sauces, sausages, burgers and savoury snacks. Fat children will lose weight fast if they eat less salt. And even faster still if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and unsalted vegetables, because these are rich in potassium, which helps to displace sodium from the body.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2007/03/obese-do-not-try-to-lose-weight-by.html and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2006/10/exercise-has-little-effect-on.html
and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2006/11/do-you-believe-that-obesity-is-caused.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
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