“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

“Begin With Correct Infant Feeding.–The importance of training children to right dietetic habits can hardly be overestimated. The little ones need to learn that they eat to live, not live to eat. The training should begin with the infant in its mother’s arms. The child should be given food only at regular intervals, and less frequently as it grows older. It should not be given sweets, or the food of older persons, which it is unable to digest. Care and regularity in the feeding of infants will not only promote health, and thus tend to make them quiet and sweet-tempered, but will lay the foundation of habits that will be a blessing to them in after years.” (Child Guidance 379.1)

“The development of type 2 diabetes in adults can be predicted in childhood, according to a U.S. study that’s followed a group of 814 children and adults since 1973. Researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center found that parental history of diabetes, as well as the presence of a condition called metabolic syndrome in childhood were major predictors of type 2 diabetes in adulthood. The finding was particularly true for black American men and women, the researchers report.

People with metabolic syndrome have at least three of the following health issues: high blood pressure; high triglycerides; high body mass (obesity); high blood glucose; and low levels of “good” high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.

“Pediatricians and family physicians should evaluate children and adolescents for metabolic syndrome and whether there is a family history of diabetes,” study lead author John Morrison said in a prepared statement. “We need to identify in childhood those who are at risk of adult metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes to prevent these outcomes.”

He also noted that adult obesity was strongly associated with obesity in childhood and adolescence — 63 percent of study participants at risk of being overweight in the 1970s were obese 25 to 30 years later.

“A positive parental history of diabetes was also strongly associated with overweight status in both childhood and adulthood,” Morrison said. (The study was published in the online edition of The Journal of Pediatrics, November 16, 2007. Copyright (c) 2007 ScoutNews, LLC.)