Shedding pounds before getting pregnant can reduce a number of health risks - but it may also add a few points to your child's reading and math scores. A recent study has found a link between a mother's weight before pregnancy and their children's cognitive skills: obese women's children score lower on math and reading tests when they were 5 to 7 years old. Get to a healthy weight before becoming pregnant. Lead author Rika Tanda , a nursing doctoral candidate at Ohio State University, and colleagues wanted to investigate potential connections between a mother's pre-pregnancy ob...

Of course you adore your adorably chubby little toddler, but you do know how much of that chubbiness is normal or whether your child might actually be overweight? Many moms don't. A recent study found that the vast majority of mothers whose toddlers were overweight had a different perception of their little ones and could not correctly identify an image representing their baby's body size. Ask your doctor if your toddler is a healthy weight. Erin Hager, PhD, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, led the study of 281 pairs of moms and their toddlers, with an average a...

When it comes to feeding babies, it's not just what you feed your child but how you feed your child. Even breastmilk in a bottle affects weight gain differently than milk directly from the breast. A recent study has found that infants fed only by bottle gained more weight each month than if they were only breastfed, regardless of whether the bottle had breastmilk or another food. Breastfeeding is better than bottle - when possible. Lead author Ruowei Li, PhD, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesi...

If money is always low and stress or depression is always high, moms may be overfeeding their babies - and thereby increasing their kids' risks of obesity. A recent unpublished study being presented at a conference found that the unhealthy practice of adding cereal to babies' bottles tends to occur more often among low-income mothers who are single and/or showing symptoms of depression or high stress. Don't add cereal to your baby's bottle. Lead author Candice Taylor Lucas, MD, a an associate professor of pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital...

Researchers are learning more about how obesity develops from complex factors beyond just eating too much. One factor may be a fear of not having enough food for one's children. A recent study reveals that food insecurity, or the anxiety about whether a person will have enough food to be sure their family is well fed, might play a part in why some children go on to become severely overweight. Follow your doctor's recommendations on feeding your baby. Rachel Gross, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Children's...

It may not just be chicken nuggets and french fries adding too much weight to children's waistlines. The very air pregnant women breathe might play a small role too.

The U.S. government aims to reduce the childhood obesity rate from the current 16.9 percent to 14.6 percent by 2020. But what would that require? The answer might surprise you.

There is hope for the nearly one-third of overweight or obese teenage girls in the U.S. - a properly focused intervention program can help them lose weight and live healthier.

Children born to women with diabetes are more likely to be obese, but one way moms can reduce this risk is to breastfeed their babies. And the pattern is true for non-diabetics too.

Four times as many obese children are in the U.S. today as there were in the 1970s - but the availability of snacks at school besides school meals shows little signs of decreasing.