Teach Children Self Control to Fight Obesity Epidemic

If you put a marshmallow on your child’s plate, could they wait to eat it?

Could they wait 15 minutes?

It’s hard enough as adults to delay gratification. But children who learn this kind of self-control at age 4 have a lower body mass index 30 years later, according to a study to be published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

In fact, it also helps them as adolescents with academics, social skills and handling stress, according to a press release from Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati.

“Interventions can improve young children’s self control, which may decrease children’s risk of becoming overweight and may have further positive effects on other outcomes important to society…” said lead researcher Tanya R. Schlam, from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, in the release.

Between the years 1968 and 1974, researchers gave 653 4-year-olds a test on how well they could delay gratification. They were offered a cookie or a marshmallow and told that if they could wait an unspecified amount of time to eat it, they would be given a second treat. The children were made to wait 15 minutes.

Years later, researchers followed up with the study participants.

“The researchers found that each minute a child delayed gratification predicted a 0.2 decrease in adult BMI,” the release states.

They also discovered that only 24 percent were overweight and 9 percent were obese. That’s considerably lower than the national average in 2008 which found 34 percent overweight and 34 percent obese, according to the news release.

With statistics like that, you have admit: that marshmallow is worth the wait.

Alice Warchol is a freelance health blog writer.

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