KidShape News

First Lady Calls for Small Changes to Reduce Childhood Obesity

October 23, 2009

In a recent address to employees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), First Lady Michelle Obama urged parents to make small changes to improve their children’s health and reduce the risk of obesity, Chicago Breaking News reports. Details at http://www.rwjf.org/childhoodobesity/digest.jsp?id=23962.

President's Daughters Asked to Help Improve Nutrition Value of School Lunches

Apr 30, 2009

Wyntergrace Williams, the 14-year-old daughter of television talk show host Montel Williams, has invited Sasha and Malia Obama to join her in asking Congress to amend the Child Nutrition Act to increase the availability of fresh produce in school meals. Williams is expected to attend two Capitol Hill hearings with Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to argue that the inclusion of vegetarian and plant-based menu items on school meals could help reduce childhood obesity and encourage more children to opt for cafeteria lunches, rather than skipping meals. During her time in Washington, D.C., Williams also will speak at Sidwell Friends School where Sasha and Malia are students.  http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2009/4/28/malia-and-sasha-obama-urged-to-join-veggie-campaign.html

 

Childhood obesity is all over the world

The KidShape office gets regular online news about childhood obesity from various services. It should be no surprise that the epidemic is not going away, but what was striking in March was how far reaching it is.

Abu Dhabi “We have a health crisis here (Abu Dhabi) with diabetes and obesity,” said Dr Serah Theuri, assistant professor at Zayed University. “It is important for children to develop good eating habits.”

Russia Health officials have ordered Russians to adopt a back-to-basics diet to stop their weight ballooning after a decade of indulgence Children have put on almost a kilo (2.2 pounds) over the past ten years. "When it comes to obesity, Russian women are among the leaders in European countries," Gennady Onishchenko, warned.

Malta A succession of childhood studies, has shown increasing trends of obesity in Malta. The most recent showed that up to one-third of pre-school children are overweight or obese.

Ireland Dr. Cliodhna Foley Nolan, says, “Parents in Ireland are still in relative denial about the problems of childhood obesity, and the balance of what many children are eating in relation to the amount of exercise they get isn’t right.

United Arab Emirates Mr. Andrew Dick , Senior, Al Kamda General Trading United Arab Emirates, says, “Child Obesity is a growing menace in the UAE.”

United Kingdom "Obesity is a massive risk to our nation's health, and a growing problem for children in the UK. If current trends continue, a staggering nine out of ten of today's children will be overweight in 2050.”

American military It is well known that Americans are getting heavier with about a third considered obese. A recent report from the defense department finds the number of troops diagnosed as overweight has more than doubled in the past 5 years.

The 20 worst foods in America

http://www.aolhealth.com/diet/basics/worst-food

Can restaurant food really be that bad? Yes. But Men's Health as shown on AOL offers appetizing replacement. A fun and shocking list.

Family stress may make kids fat.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNewsMolt/idUKTRE50K56H20090121

Wed Jan 21, 2009  “NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Living in a stressful household may raise a child's risk of becoming obese, according to findings from a study of Swedish families. Compared with 5- to 6-year-old children living in families with low stress levels, age-matched children from "high-stress" families had about twice the risk for obesity, the study team found. “Families can probably deal with some stress or stressors, but not with several at the same time," Felix-Sebastian Koch, a doctoral student from Linkping University, told Reuters Health.”

Report Links Increased Media Exposure to Decline in Children's Health

http://www.rwjf.org/childhoodobesity/digest.jsp?id=9065&c=EMC-ND138

A report released Tuesday by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a nonprofit advocacy group reveals that prolonged exposure to mass media is associated with obesity and a range of other health problems among children and adolescents, the New York Times reports.

Child Obesity Seen as Warning of Heart Disease

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/health/12heart.html?_r=1&ref=health

A new study finds striking evidence that children who are obese or have high cholesterol show early warning signs of heart disease. The study, presented November 11, 2008 at the American Heart Association conference in New Orleans, found that the thickness of artery walls of children and teenagers who are obese or have high cholesterol resembled the thickness of artery walls of an average 45-year-old. The study, which has not yet been published, was small, involving 70 children ages 6 to 19, and several experts said the results would need to be replicated to be considered conclusive. But they said the method used to measure artery wall thickness was considered a reliable indicator of heart disease risk, usually more reliable than cholesterol levels or other measures. The method, which uses ultrasound, has been applied to children in other studies in the last few years, but experts said this appeared to be the first time that results had been correlated to adults.

 

Kids mimic parents' diets from an early age

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A26J920081104?feedType=nl&feedName=ushealth200

Parents who want their preschoolers to eat their vegetables may need to take a hard look at their own eating habits, new research suggests. In a study of 120 young children who were allowed to "buy" food from a play grocery store, researchers found that even 2-year-olds tended to mirror their parents' usual food choices. Children who stocked up on sweets, sugary drinks and salty snacks generally had parents whose typical grocery list featured such items. Similarly, children with the healthiest shopping habits seemed to be following their parents' lead as well. The findings, suggest that even very young children do not indiscriminately reach for candy when given the chance. Instead, they seem to already be forming food preferences -- potentially lasting ones -- based on their parents' shopping carts.

 

Child's sleep linked to adulthood obesity risk

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A24DL20081103?feedType=nl&feedName=ushealth200

Consistently getting a good night's sleep may help protect children from becoming obese as adults, a study published Monday suggests. Researchers found that among more than 1,000 people followed from birth to age 32, those who got too little sleep as children were more likely than their well-rested counterparts to become obese adults. Even with a range of other factors considered -- like childhood weight and TV habits, and adulthood exercise levels -- there remained a link between sleep deprivation during childhood and obesity risk later in life. All of this supports the idea that early sleep habits have a direct effect on weight in the long term, according to Dr. Robert John Hancox, the study's senior author. Hancox and his colleagues at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, report the findings in the journal Pediatrics.

 

Sugary Treats or Cereal Offenders? New Report Finds Some Cereals More Than 50 Percent Sugar

How many parents would feed their children a glazed doughnut every morning for breakfast? Most probably wouldn't consider that a healthy choice for a regular morning meal. But a new study found that some of the breakfast cereals popular with kids contain as much sugar -- or more -- as a glazed doughnut from Dunkin' Donuts. "We wanted to know what the make-up was of cereals that were marketed to kids… we were surprised that we found so much sugar in so many cereals,"  said Gayle Williams, deputy health editor of Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports took a look at the nutritional content for 27 cereals, including the amount of sugar, salt and fiber. Only four of the 27 cereals rated "Very Good." The best of all was Cheerios, followed by Kix, Life and Honey Nut Cheerios. Quaker Oats makes Life, and General Mills manufactures the rest of the top picks. At the bottom of the list -- Corn Pops by Kellogg's. Also among the cereals that Consumer Reports rates "fair," at best, were Kellogg's Honey Smacks and Post's Golden Crisp cereal. Both of those choices have more than 50 percent sugar per serving size.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/story?id=5930710&page=1 (ABC news summary)

http://www.consumerreports.org/health/healthy-living/diet-nutrition/healthy-foods/breakfast-cereals/overview/breakfast-cereals-ov.htm (CR)

Putting health on the menu

Requiring fast-food and restaurant chains to post calorie information wouldn't hurt them and could help us.

By Harold Goldstein and Eric Schlosser
August 5, 2008

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-schlosser5-2008aug05,0,1626001.story

Weight issues can affect kids school performance

By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2008

A study in Philadelphia finds that overweight children have lower scores in certain tests and are less inclined to join sports.

http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-he-capsule28-2008jul28,0,3004408.story
 

Child ear infections linked to obesity

August 15, 2008 Los Angeles Times by Shari Roan

A series of studies presented at the American Psychological Assn. annual meeting suggest that ear infections may damage nerves that control taste, which may influence a preference for fatty or sweet foods.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/08/child-ear-infec.html

Obesity on the Kids' Menus at Top Chains

From the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI): Nearly every single possible combination of the children's meals at KFC, Taco Bell, Sonic, Jack in the Box, and Chick-fil-A is too high in calories, according to the nonprofit CSPI, which today released the results of an investigation into the nutritional quality of kids’ meals at 13 top restaurant chains. 93% of 1,474 possible choices at the 13 chains exceed 430 calories—an amount that is one-third of what the Institute of Medicine recommends that children aged four through eight should consume in a day. Besides being almost always too high in calories, 45 percent of the kids' meals at the 13 chains studied by CSPI are too high in saturated and trans fat, and 86 percent are too high in sodium. That’s alarming, according to CSPI, because a quarter of children between the ages of five and ten show early signs of heart disease, such as high LDL (the "bad" cholesterol) or elevated blood pressure.

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200808041.html (press release)
http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/kidsmeals-report.pdf (report/investigation)
 

Overweight kids likely to have more headaches, study finds

The more overweight children and teenagers are, the more frequent and disabling their headaches, according to the first national study to look at possible links between obesity and headaches in kids. A great payoff of slimming down is that heavy kids tend to gain some relief from headaches, says Andrew Hershey, a pediatric neurologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, who led the study at seven U.S. headache centers. The report on 913 children and teenagers, followed for six months, is published online in Headache.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2008-09-16-overweight-kids-headaches_N.htm

6 Food Mistakes Parents Make

HARRIET WOROBEY, a childhood nutrition instructor, knows firsthand that children can be picky eaters, but even she was surprised by a preschooler last year who ate a mostly chocolate diet. “Chocolate milk, chocolate chip muffins, chocolate chip pancakes — it was unbelievable,” said Ms. Worobey, director of the Rutgers University Nutritional Sciences Preschool in New Brunswick, N.J. “His mother just thought, ‘That’s what he wants, so that’s what I’m going to do.’ ” While most parents haven’t resorted to the chocolate diet, they can relate to the daily challenge of finding foods that children will eat. Although obesity dominates the national discussion on childhood health, many parents are also worried that their child’s preferred diet of nuggets and noodles could lead to a nutritional deficit. Fussiness about food is a normal part of a child’s development. Young children are naturally neophobic — they have a distrust of the new. Even the most determined parents can be cowed by a child’s resolve to eat nothing rather than try something new. As a result, parents often give in, deciding that a bowl of Cocoa Puffs or a Pop-Tart, while not ideal, must be better than no food at all. “I think parents feel like it’s their job to just make their children eat something,” Ms. Worobey said. “But it’s really their job to serve a variety of healthy foods and get their children exposed to foods.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/health/healthspecial2/15eat.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin