【有文稿】祖父母带大的孩子更易发胖

一项针对中国本土的最新研究指出，祖父母带孩子更容易导致儿童肥胖：在被调查的500个孩子中，将近一半由祖父祖母照顾生活起居，而这些孩子肥胖的风险是仅由父母照顾的孩子的2倍，且这些被爷爷奶奶、姥姥姥爷照顾的儿童，相比于跟着爸爸妈妈的儿童，更少做家务，也会进食更多不健康食品。 Studies show that Chinese children who are mainly cared for by their grandparents are more than twice as likely to be overweight. According to a recent study China is now one of the fattest countries in the world. China ranks only second behind the United States in terms of obesity. The WHO has called childhood obesity one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century, and it seems China seems to be no exception. 为什么会这样呢？ 来听一听吧！ Transcript: Michael Butterworth: And studies have shown that Chinese children who are mainly cared for by their grandparents are more than twice as likely to be overweight as those cared for by their parents. According to a recent study, China is now one of the fattest countries in the world. The World Health Organization has called childhood obesity one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. So, is this purely a Chinese phenomenon? Wu You: When it talks about fattest countries, I don’t think so. Because it is how you look at it. Because China has a large population, we all know that. Fifteen percent of those obesity cases come from China and India, it’s because these two countries has the largest populations. We can see here in the list, even the top twenty you can’t see the name of China. It’s because that when you compared with the obesity percentage, China is not high on the list. Michael Butterworth: Chinese society has changed a huge amount in the last forty years, and even before that. It’s natural to assume that if you have, maybe a five year old or five or six year old child being taken care of by say, someone in their seventies or eighties, you know, when these people were that age they didn’t have a lot. You know, China wasn’t a country of, you know, prosperity, as it is at the moment. So, you know, perhaps there’s an instance, not only of grandparents inherently wanting to indulge their children slightly, but also that they want to give their grandchildren what they didn’t have. Wu You: Yeah, to make up for that. Yeah, I think, for each child they didn’t have the ability to choose what they eat until a certain age, and that was chosen by their parents and their grandparents. And when Michael you mentioned about the grandparents want to make up for what they didn’t have in the old days and that is why they want to give the best to their grandkids. And usually the grandparents are meeting all their neighbors, and when they see a kid is very skinny and they will say “Mm, is he okay? Why is he not fat?” And they believe that the fat kids can be more healthy. Michael Butterworth: Well this, this sort of touches on something we discussed earlier before the show about, about how, in some societies, being fat is considered desirable. You know, there isn’t the stigma attached to it that there is in many developed countries, where, you know, if you’re from a poorer country and yet you are a bit overweight, the implication there is that you know, you’re wealthy enough that you can afford to feed yourself enough and maybe not have to do a job toiling in the fields for hours or something like that. Lincoln Van der Westhuizen: Yeah and in certain African cultures as well it’s very important and very often the leader of the tribe or the leader of the clan would be the fattest man. Wu You: And at the same time in China, we can see a lot of primary schools, they are promoting more physical education in classes, and also some more football teams for the kids. There has been a calling on a healthy diet both in China and also in the western world as well. I still remember that the American first lady Michelle Obama has been promoting the campaign of healthy food for the primary school students as well.