Children living near 'park or lawns' less likely to be overweight

A new US study says that children who are living near a park or lawn in urban areas are less likely to be overweight.

Children who have lush green areas around their home are more actively involved in the physical activities and thus are fit and don’t tend to put on weight easily. They are always on move due to availability of wide open space in their neighborhood.

Gilbert Liu of the Children's Health Services Research Programme at the Indiana University School of Medicine studied around 7,334 children of Marion County. The children were in the age group of 3 to 18 years. The body mass indexdefine (BMI) of the children were calculated and the researchers also jotted down which children has more of departmental stores, fast food restaurants, grocery shops etc in their neighborhood.

"I was intrigued by our result" Liu, the lead researcher said.

He further added that while his urban neighbors may see youth "playing kick-the-can in the middle of the street … most would agree that places in the city that have shade trees or grass or nice landscaping make physical activity more enjoyable and likely."

It was found that children who had green belts around their living place were less likely to put on weight then the other children.

One expert didn't agree with this point and says its quite difficult to make a connection between obesity and green space and other factors such as socioeconomic factor also play a major role in child's activity level.

Thomas Glass, of the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health in Baltimore said, "We may say that green spaces are associated with kids' activity level, but we really don't know for sure."

He added, "People who live in green spaces areas versus not might be different in a lot of ways that have nothing to do with the presence of green space. There are a lot of parks in Baltimore, for example, but you can point to a lot of factors, such as crime, to explain why you find these parks empty of kids playing."