Active Kids and Body Fat

It could be that active 5-year-old you sometimes have trouble keeping up with is banking his energy level to stay slim later on. A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that kids – mostly boys — who are active at age 5 tend to have less body fat at ages 8 and 11.

The average 5-year-old in the study exercised at least moderately for 30 minutes every day, but for every extra 10 minutes of activity, the kids ended up with one-third of a pound less fat tissue at the ages of 8 and 11. It was noted that more study is needed to find out why the 5-year-olds had this so-called banking effect, but one theory is they didn’t develop as many fat cells or that something happened to their metabolism to protect them in case they became less active later on. So send them off to school knowing that recess will do a body good.