Move more, lose weight, so goes the conventional wisdom, right?

Well … .

A curious finding comes out of a four-year study of 212 kids at 54 schools in the town of Plymouth, U.K. This latest finding from the 11-year-old EarlyBird Diabetes Study being conducted by the Peninsula Medical School finds that physical activity may not play much — or any — role in helping kids lose weight. The finding is based on a trial showing that when kids with weight issues were exposed to more physical activity, they only lost about 3 ounces each. The study did find that overweight kids tend to exercise less. Researchers were left to conclude that “early feeding errors” — hefty portions, calorie-dense snacks and sugary drinks — play a much more significant role in childhood obesity.

This finding was presaged by an earlier EarlyBird report that the one hour of moderate physical activity recommended each day for kids may not be enough to keep their weight down. Following that report, researchers were quick to note that while physical activity wasn’t found to reduce weight, “regular exercise improved metabolic health even without improving BMI.”

Kids in the study who met the recommended minimum — 42 percent of boys and just 11 percent of girls — did register better marks for blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes later in life. Moral: staying active is good for you, kids, even it doesn’t necessarily help you lose weight.

(I’m especially interested in the relationship between physical activity and weight in childhood. As a kid, I was always moving — football, basketball, baseball, riding the bike to far off places that would have horrified my parents had they known. Yet until I got into what was then called junior high, I was what was politely referred to in the day as “stocky.” And I ate relatively well, save for a Pop Tart problem that continues to this day.)

So, as your kids face the end of a presumably active summer and a return to the sedentary ways of school, should you ease up on the fight to make your school a more active place?

Not hardly, according to another report, this one from Cochrane Researchers, which reviewed 26 studies of programs promoting physical activity at schools in Australia, South America, Europe and North America. Their findings concurred with the EarlyBird study, noting that the programs didn’t seem to have much impact on weight. But the studies did find that the programs improved the kids blood cholesterol levels as well as fitness as measured by lung capacity. Further, the programs likely will play a role in shaping more active, healthier lifestyles that should carry over into adulthood.

Another reason for kids to stay active, according to yet another study: Kids who are obese increase their risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and type 2 diabetes among adolescents has now been linked with brain abnormalities and diminished cognitive performance. This according to a just-published study by the New York University Langone Medical Center, which detected the aforementioned problems via MRI scans. Such problems were previously observed in adults with type 2 diabetes, but it was assumed the condition was a result of vascular disease. The MRI results detected an uptick in white matter in the brain, believed to be caused by type 2 diabetes.

Yet another recent study suggests that kids may not be the only ones for whom losing weight is a challenge despite being more physically active. An Indiana University study of 12,000 people ages 20 to 64 found that white women tended to lose more weight than men or women of other ethnic backgrounds when meeting minimum national guidelines for physical activity. Researchers say that people with more LTPA — leisure-time physical activity — have an easier time losing weight, and speculate that the white women in the study likely had more LTPA than the other groups.

Which I’m sure has a number of women in that demographic, especially the ones with children, gagging. And not because kids tend to gobble up whatever LTPA moms of any stripe might have. Rather, it’s because kids are bad for your health.

It’s true. I read it here.