Among four-year-old children, “overweight and obesity (…) increased significantly in 2020-2021, compared to the two previous school years”, summarize the authors of this study, carried out under the aegis of the Public Health Agency France in Val-de-Marne, a department in the Paris region.
The authors examined data from nearly 50,000 children attending kindergarten in this department.
These figures come from health checks systematically carried out in the middle section, when the children are around four years old.
Although the scope of the study is limited by its geographical concentration, the breadth and completeness of this data allow reliable conclusions to be drawn at the level of this department.
These show that the proportion of obese children has almost doubled during the two years corresponding roughly to the start of the health crisis.
It went from 2.8% to 4.6%.
The rate of overweight children, a situation that covers broader criteria than obesity, has also increased, from 8.9% to 11.2%.
The authors hypothesize that the measures taken against Covid - generalized confinement at first, then systematic school closures as soon as a case was reported - favored excessive weight gain in children.
The study, which also notes that girls are more affected than boys, is however unable to detail the precise mechanisms of this development.
"It would be interesting to know if it is rather the diet that has deteriorated - increased snacking, consumption of ultra-processed products - or the drastic reduction in activities", note the authors.
This work is in line with previous studies, including one published in the fall of 2021 by US health authorities.
Larger, it had examined the data of more than 400,000 young people - aged between 2 and 19 years - and had concluded that their weight gain had, on average, been twice as fast since the start of the pandemic.
“The increase was greatest in people who were already obese before the pandemic, and in younger school-aged children,” the work concluded.
© 2022 AFP