ABSTRACT
Any child who eats lots of snacks as well as high-calorie main meals will need to do plenty of exercise to burn off the calories or run the risk of storing these surplus calories as fat. With the huge change in children's diets over the last 50 years, increasing numbers of children are becoming overweight, even though they may be active and busy. The best way to monitor a child's growth is by taking occasional height and weight measurements and plotting them on a growth chart. Growth charts alone are not sufficient for showing if a person is either obese or underweight. A child may be on the 95th centile for weight but this does not necessarily mean they are overweight. Some parents know how active their child is without even having to think about it. Whether children choose to be active will be influenced by similar factors to those guiding their food choices.
