[Dietetic indications for obesity treatment in childhood]

A growing organism needs to have a steady availability of nutrients, in suitable quantities and in correct ratios, in order to achieve its genetic potential. Overweight and obesity in growing individuals may conceal lack of one or more nutrients. Obesity in childhood is the consequence of an excess of calories compared with the energetic waste because of the interlacing of genetic factors, metabolic factors (cellularity of the adipose tissue, deficit of thermogenesis), excessive food intake, alteration of some neuro-endocrine mechanisms which regulate bodily weight (set point theory), lack of suitable physical exercise; therefore a complicity of endogenous, exogenous, biological, psychological and social factors to which we cannot ascribe singularly a primary role. It is however necessary to start, since the first year of a child's life, a food education program as the latest acquisition shows that degenerative pathologies of metabolism start in a very precocious age and unbalanced nutrition starts since childhood. The most suitable therapeutic approach is that which takes in consideration all the aspects of obesity. This requires an intervention on several aspects: food, psychological mechanisms which sometimes are the cause of hypernutrition, attitude towards physical exercise, and also family and social behaviors concerning the patient. The traditional diet approach towards childhood obesity is based on balanced hypochaloric diets which provide about 1200-1800 kcal per day, distributed in 4 or 5 daily meals. The correct meal division educates the child to self-control and it is advantageous from a metabolic point of view because it avoids both high instability of glyco-insulin, caused by an excess of food, and because improving thermogenesis, induced by the diet, the result will consist in an increase of energetic waste. For the main meals it is advantageous to apply to a main course.