Does the clock start ticking at age 10?
Heart attack may become a pediatric illness!
In other words, obesity in adolescents means they are at greater risk for heart disease in adults.
This isn’t speculation–it’s from a world-class study of over 270,000 Danish kids, age 7 to 13, studied at age 25, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Diets don’t usually solve the problem.
Most weight loss programs recommend diets, but most people–kids and adults–fail on diets.
News flash: it’s not kids’ fault. They need school programs or family programs instead.
How to start?
Let’s stop letting schools become fast food franchises.
Let’s ban high-calorie snacks, sugary juices and pop and energy drinks from school stores, cafeterias and vending machines
Let’s get better programs for schools, that don’t involve fast food subsidies of report cards, as they do in some parts of Florida!
Let’s get a Farm Bill that gives subsidies to producers of nutritious produce, not King Corn—which is high calorie, and low nutrient.
Let’s get schools that kick out the purveyors of childhood obesity…which clearly leads to diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver and colorectal cancer, and 7 other cancers …all formerly diseases of adults.
Soon to be the shape of your kids, unless you act now.

 

Obesity surgery isn’t pretty, but it is safer in teens than in adults.

Making diabetes, high blood pressure and worst of all to kids, incessant teasing and couch potato status go away is very attractive.

Researchers found that of 53 teens who had surgery–gastric banding, or the Lap Band–the complication rate is much better than in adults. And no one died, unlike adults, where up to 1 percent die, though the surgery safety is improving.

Sugar-coating obesity does no kid any good. If your kid’s BMI is 85th percentile or higher, he or she is obese. He/she needs blood tests–fasting cholesterol and triglycerides. If someone in the family is obese, then your kids needs tests of the liver: AAT and ALT and of course, a fasting blood sugar to detect diabetes.

Treatment? Give carrots, not sticks. Start by making fruits and vegetables visible and available for snacks. No PC games or TV for more than an hour daily, and less if you can. And no drinks with added sugar: soda is liquid candy, and most juice drinks are too.

 

Kids 6 and younger, in a new study called Eating in larger groups increases food consumption,
ate 30% more graham crackers when they ate with 8 other kids, than when they snacked with just 2 other kids.

Ate more, and ate faster

. A recipe for pediatric obesity if ever one was.

Brian Wansink has done the same research in adults, with the same results, and the New York Times summarizes the two main theories why:
1. People see the food on the table for a longer period of time, and compete for it, as is genetically programmed into us: they follow the see-food diet.
2. People socialize, enjoy themselves and eat more because it is part of the enjoyment.
I’d suggest a third theory, based on my clinical practice in weight loss, often with executives.
3. People like being part of a group, and eat at the level of the group.

The latter is also suggested by Wansink’s research.

To eat less, eat with a small group, and sit next to the person who eats the least.

You’ll have the proximate example of someone who eats less than you do, egging you on to eat less yourself, however silently.

Of course, if you tend to eat the right portions, you might want not to eat in big groups at all.

Graham crackers aren’t bad, but they are a dessert, not an every day food. The easy way to give them the right portion is to not serve grahams at the table/in the play group/all around.

Just like adults, just pre-plate (parents who pre-plate their own food in the kitchen rather than serving themselves and others at the table fill up more quickly and eat less, and are less likekly to take seconds. Try it.