A new study appears Tuesday, April 26 in a bulletin of Public Health France. She confirms that children gained weight during the Covid-19 epidemic and this overweight first impacts girls, children who live in priority education zones and those who do not go to the canteen.
For the purposes of this study, nearly 50,000 children aged four and a half on average have been followed since 2018, so before the start of the health crisis. The Maternal and Child Protection (PMI) of Val-de-Marne studied these pupils of the middle section of kindergarten and their weight curves were scrutinized. Result: we observe an increase of more than 50% in the number of obese children in three years. They were 518 for the school year started in 2018 and 800 in 2021.
Children gained weight for exactly the same reasons as adults. During the pandemic there were several lockdowns. Parks, swimming pools remained closed, classes and schools were also closed in the event of Covid-19. The little ones stayed locked up at home, without going out or very little. The hours spent in front of the screens have exploded, snacking too, inevitably it makes you gain weight. And then all the prevention campaigns focused on Covid-19, and not on nutrition or sport.
In this study, a quarter of the children live in a priority education zone, they are the ones who have gained the most weight, especially the girls. Doctor Marie-Laure Baranne, who led this study does not explain it, but she observed that little girls were more affected. And that there are also factors that protect children, those who are enrolled in daycare and who go to the canteen gain less weight, because they have balanced meals and practice physical activities.
Doctor Baranne hopes that with the return to a normal life, the children will lose the accumulated weight. According to her, it is urgent to carry out preventive actions and take care of these children because overweight and obesity, when you are young, can trigger sometimes serious illnesses in adulthood.