NEWS: Bad News For Fat 9-Year-Old Chicks

CULTURE: Bad News For Fat 9-Year-Old Chicks

Fat chicks go through puberty sooner. University of Michigan performed a study of overweight three-year-olds and found that those whose weight remained unchecked could reach puberty – which is somewhat limitedly defined as breast development – as early as nine years of age.

The study was conducted using 354 girls as test subjects and determined that young girls within the body mass index's 85th and 95th were at an increased risk of maturing at an accelerated rate. While this may not sound overly serious, early puberty has been linked to serious difficulties for the children experiencing them.

There are apparently various social problems as Marcia Herman-Giddens of the University of North Carolina explained:

I am not sure I buy that last part. I imagine the girls become serious victims of ridiculing and kids are relentless, but I doubt the advances are sexual. Girls who are allowed to reach levels of obesity with a BMI rating in the 95th percentile, prompting a premature puberty onset, are not getting teased because they are developed. They are getting teased because they are fat. And I say allowed because I don't think many girls at nine years of age can reach a level of obesity that serious without some help. We can blame poor genes, fast food and preservatives, but all these things were around when I was nine-years-old, and I doubt I even knew what the word "obesity" meant at that age. Sure, there were some kids who were a little rolly polly, liked to stuff their faces with paste and cookies, but somehow these single-digit, aged kids weren't weighing more than healthy adults.

I'm not a parent, but what's going on? How is this even happening with a frequency that warrants serious medical study? Is it that hard to stop your kid from stuffing themselves to the point of inflicting permanent and serious health hazards? Cookies and cake are a treat, not a daily staple in the diet. My parents had control of my diet for a pretty long time. Are things that different now? I'm not in the peak of health now, but most of the damage I've done to my BMI has been done since I stopped having my parents as personal chefs.

i think it's parents who don't know how to say "no" to their children. Partly because they don't want to deal with a temper tantrum, and partly because they most likely have a poor diet themselves. Also, if a parent gives in once to a child and lets them have two slices of cake, it gets easier and easier for the child to keep asking for it. Then that's all they want. And as my mom said about my life, it "becomes a downward spiral," and the child gets fat.

I got teased for having breasts when I was 9. But I was not subjected to sexual advances by smarmy men. Maybe it's because I'm a boy.

How is this happening? I walk down the street and see so many fat kids. Kids just dont play sport anymore at school, they live on chips and chicken nuggets and stuff. When I was little I was a 'treat' for me to get junk food when I went round to friends houses. Whats happened to propper home cooked meals?

When are parents going to realise what they're doing to their kids? Its disgusting.

Preach it, my brother. I had boobs long before the girls in school did.

humans are not intelligent and/or ignorant.

the billboards and commercials are working. become docile and sedentary.. consume, fuck, repeat.

Soon the fucking will become to much work

haha...I'm so out of shape (though a stick boy), when I fucked a girl who smoked, we had to take breaks to catch our breath.
It's starting already....*dramatic music sting*

DAMN YOU EVOLUTION!!!

Too much yummy food, and our bodies are developing faster than our dumbass brains. It still blows my mind that the body can become reproductively capable at 12 yet our brains don't finish until our early 20s. WTF is up with that, Evolution?? WHY EVOLUTION, WHY!!!?????

I developed breasts around 9, I didn't have older men hitting on me because it was obvious I wasn't old enough for them to be hitting on me... Breast development doesn't really mean "puberty" so much as "fat". Otherwise they need to be testing the 9 year old boys who are also apparently hitting puberty, since they've also developed "breasts" by this point.

But I've had enough bad experiences with parents, I really think most parents now-a-days need classes in common sense. They just let their kids walk all over them and have what they want, and I've actually seen parents keep bugging their child asking if they wanted candy and "are you sure you don't?", multiple times.

Sometimes parents get lazy and use t.v. and snack foods to babysit their kids...or they use candy and junk food to placate and pacify their kids. It may not be appropriate but it happens way too often...I've been a firsthand witness to this... Fat kids make me sad...

I had my period at 11. Although I am heavy now I wasn't as a kid. I hit puberty at 11 and gained ALOT of weight. I also got hips, ass and curves by about 13 and my lovely DD's have been this size since I was 14. I've been getting icky advances since I was 14. lol

But I've already decided that my children and whoever their father is and I will not be on the eating out tip or part of the fast food jungle. I don't put fatty snacky shit in my dorm room cause it makes me want to eat it. I'm already working on my bfs eating habits. He eats out like everyday!! SO EXPENSIVE!!

Bottom line. Teach your kids CONTROL at a young age and it will help them their entire lives.

on the other hand, if you act like a food nazi, there is a significant risk that your kids are going to grow up bitter. kids don't get raised in a bubble, however much you like to pretend they do. one day they are going to notice that your house is full of trailmix and their (fat) friends' houses are full of chocolate-covered cheetos and one day, when they go to college and move out and buy their own food, they will eat their weight in said powdered cheese products.

my parents never let us eat sweets like, ever (although for some bizarre reason soda was ok?) and my sister grew up to be a candy-hoarder. i don't know how i managed to avoid the same compulsion. i've never actually been able to finish a candy bar.

one of my closest friends is the same way. she was overweight from about high school on, mostly because she had terrible eating habits she adopted once free of her parents' strict dietary rules. fortunately, she has since lost all the weight.

i'm not saying you should be the enabler to childhood obesity, but you might want to allow enough junk food as a treat that your kids don't feel unjustly deprived.

This isn't quite what is covered by the article, but my friends' daughter looked 14-15 when she was 10. Early puberty acompanied by a growth spurt meant that she looked a lot older and more mature than she was, and she did get hit on by people who though she was, you know, at least in high school.

My family produces two kinds of people: Whales and Fence Rails. My sister, at 5' 8" has hit as high as 285 lbs, my Mom at 5' 2" easily weighed 185 lbs, and I have an uncle (Mom's brother) who at 5' 7" went to 350 lbs. Sister has some glandular problems, but she would make up a double batch of Kraft(tm) macaroni and cheese and eat the whole thing in one sitting. Mom was a chocolaholic. Uncle loved his wife's Mexican cooking even more than he loved his wife.

Sister popped out boobs in 3rd grade (in 1956).

Then there's me: 5' 11" and 170 lbs. I probably have as much of an appetite as my relatives (I'm hungry all the time), but I only eat one light meal a day with few or no snacks between. Mom was always after me to gain weight, she thought I was ill when I went as low as 165 lbs at age 19, took me to the doctor.

The point: Obese or otherwise indulgent parents encourage obesity in their kids.

Just to play devil's advocate here, a high percentage on the BMI in a child does not necessarily mean they are overweight. My nine year old weighs 97 pounds, but she's also a little over 5 feet tall. A 72 percentile in weight sounds high until you factor in being off the charts for height.

I hit puberty at 9 but I've never been obese. Some girls just do. xx

The real problem is because of how obsessed our culture is weight weight and appearance, we have unhealthy views twoards food--especially America.

We're ruled by junk food, it's the fast, easy thing to do in our busy lives since we're running from one thing to another. Many parents get their kids started on this. Instead of it just being another thing to eat, it's a reward.

In my case my mother would buy junkfood, then I had to fight with my older brother to get it, so we'd both sneak as much as we could before the other could get to it. With birthday cakes I had two days to eat as much as possible and then it was getting thrown away. Since I've gotten older, I can buy junk food and it will sit around longer than it ever would've if I had had the same thing as a child, but I still have some of those unhealthy habits stuck in the back of my mind like "I gotta eat all of it fast, otherwise it'll be gone."

Thanksgiving dinner my family always discussed the latest diets and would give me looks if I went to get more food, but if I barely ate they'd praise me for it... when I got home I would end up eating to make up for how hungry I was by not eating earlier, and it was unhealthier stuff.

That's just within my own family, where I have hundreds of stories. With my job at a movie theater I've grown to hate kid's meals. I point out to parents it would be less expensive for them to buy a big combo and all share it, get free refills and they say "They won't want to share, I don't want to deal with it" These same parents end up buying their kid an icee seperately or an extra candy because what comes in the kids meal isn't even good enough. I've asked the child if they want butter, the kid has said no and the parent has told me to put it on anyways. And when working feild-trips (which is crazy to me, as a child I never went to the movies for a field-trip) we fix all the children a popcorn and drink...parents try to get theirs first, or they insist on having butter put on their popcorn when we didn't put it on any of the children's. They don't realize that their kid sees this, and later in life when they have the ability to make their own choice they're going to want to have the best--and that's all the things mommy and daddy tried to hide from them and assumed they wouldn't notice.

I actually knew a 7 year old who wanted me to order her a Big Mac when we went to McDonald's. I tried to convince her she didn't need it (I was 18 at the time) and I wound up getting her to agree to the happy meal when I ate the same thing. She was active, but probably weighed 3/4s of what I did and I was a good foot taller. Then an hour later she complained about being hungry again... and I kept noticing this whenever I'd go places with her and her aunt. I obviously didn't have enough time with her to undo the damage her parents had done to her eating habits.

I thought BMI was a ratio of height and weight and didn't take into account things like muscle mass.

if they're fat when they're 9 yrs old- don't blame the food you moron- blame the parents.
I don't care how bad the food is or how bad your genes are- parents are the number one factor.

The BMI for a 9 year old, 5'1" and 97 pounds, is 18.4, and in the 72nd percentile. The first number is the muscle mass; the second number indicates that only 28% of children are in her range.

As for what everyone else is saying about children and food, I would agree. But we have a societal problem with many parents looking for scapegoats to take the blame off themselves.

i want to see a study that puts the age of the parents in as a factor to the fat kids having health issues. i have a sneaky feeling that with this boom in teenage parents there is a boom in fat little kids. not saying all teenage parents are bad parents, i know a few kids that have kids and as far as i can tell they are doin a hell of job. but i think that they may be an exception. but i dunno just a thought, i hope i didn't piss anyone off.

Just from my observation, not any scientific study, the people who wait until late in life are more likely to be over-indulgent of their kids. My Mom married at age 32, and bore me at age 37.