Personal Health : The Danger That Lurks in Chubby Babies

Chubby babies can look adorable. But parents often worry that they will grow into pudgy kids and overweight teens.

The issue has been debated for years, with some researchers finding a clear-cut relationship between birth weight and childhood obesity and others discovering no such link.

A just-published study in the American Journal of Diseases of Children suggests that there may be cause for worry.

Researchers from Israel and the United States evaluated more than 33,000 children, comparing their birth weights and their weights at age 17. They found that higher birth weights correlated strongly with overweight in late teen years.

The link was observed beginning with babies weighing more than 6.5 pounds and got stronger as their weights increased. (In the United States, the average full-term baby weighs about 7.5 pounds at birth.)

But researchers acknowledge that many other factors influence later obesity.

Ethnic and environmental factors play a role. Overweight mothers, for instance, may be more likely than thinner mothers to overfeed their infants. For those reasons, birth weight alone is a poor predictor of later obesity, the researchers emphasize.

A local pediatrician calls the study interesting but warns parents not to adjust their child’s diet on the basis of its results alone, nor to worry too much if they’ve just had a big baby.

Most important is to track an infant’s height and weight over time, says Ross Miller, a pediatrician at Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles, and a USC assistant clinical professor of pediatrics.

“During the first year, exams every two months are standard,” he says. He tells parents: “Ask the pediatrician to see the growth chart each visit, to show you how the child is doing.”

Parents shouldn’t drastically adjust their baby’s diet without consulting the pediatrician, Miller says. In particular, it is unwise to give young children--especially those under age 2--nonfat milk, because their growing bodies need some fat, he says.

And, regardless of their child’s weight, all parents should be careful not to let food become part of a reward system, Miller says.

“Many times babies get overweight because parents use food to pacify kids (who aren’t hungry) when they are fussy,” he says.