A mother in northwest England is fighting to get her 8-year-old daughter back after the town council removed the girl because she was extremely overweight.
The Cumbria County Council reportedly had a number of concerns about the girl's upbringing but said it was her obesity that triggered the decision to put her into care, The Times of London reported Friday.
"Parental behavior that leads to childhood obesity can be a form of neglect," says Anne Ridgeway, chairman of the Cumbria Local Safeguarding Children Board.
The girl's mother contends her daughter's size is related to a medical problem or genetics and has nothing to do with diet.
"Our daughter doesn't overeat and she's active," the mother told The Times. "The only bad thing we have given her is fizzy drinks."
The 5-foot-tall girl reportedly wears a size 16, which is six sizes larger than the average for her age.
According to Britain's National Obesity Forum, the girl is the latest of a small number of children taken into care because of obesity.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International
Related stories:
Weight gain between first and second pregnancies associated with increased odds of male second child
A slightly greater number of males than females are born worldwide every year. In recent decades, although there are still more baby boys born than girls, there has been an apparent decline in the ratio of male to female newborns in several industrialized countries, including Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Japan and the United States. That has led researchers to ask: Are there any factors that can influence the probability of giving birth to a baby boy or girl?
Fat mum hastens path to childhood obesity
A fat mother hastens a child’s path to obesity, finds a study published ahead of print in the
Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Explaining a genetic disorder's unique shift
Findings reported in this week's
PLoS Biology give insight into the unique characteristics of the birth defect known as Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), and at the same time, may help explain the way that a certain type of gene is expressed in all humans.
Blood pressure response to daily stress provides clues for better hypertension treatment
How the body regulates blood pressure in response to daily stress is the focus of a study geared toward helping people whose pressure is out of control.
Research highlights problems of predicting birthweights in obese mothers
Researchers have found what they believe to be the most accurate way of predicting the birth-weight of babies born to the growing number of obese mothers, according to a study in the UK-based journal
Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Indian twins born six weeks apart doing well: report
Twins born in eastern India almost six weeks apart and of the opposite sex are doing well despite low birth weights, doctors said, according to a report Sunday.
Polish baby born 15 times over drink-drive limit
A Polish mother who was intoxicated during labour gave birth to a baby girl who was almost 15 times over the adult drink-driving limit, police said Tuesday.
Morther's obesity a factor in newborn deaths for blacks, not whites, new study reports
A study led by the University of South Florida sheds new light on obesity's role in the black-white gap in infant mortality. While maternal obesity appears to have no impact on the early survival of infants born to white women, the situation is different for black women, researchers report in the June 2008 issue of the journal
Obstetrics & Gynecology.