I have previously noted that the real problem with fast food is not so much the ‘food’ but rather the ‘fast’ - i.e. the fact, that it is designed to be eaten quickly.

I also, earlier this year, blogged about novel approaches like the MandoMeter or the SMART device to help people slow down their eating to better control their weights.

it turns out that the speed of eating may in fact be one of the earliest predictors of obesity, even in 4-year old kids.

Thus, in a study by Robert Berkowitz and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, published in the latest issue of OBESITY, rapid eating (higher number of mouthfuls per minute) of a single laboratory testmeal was a remarkably strong predictor of subsequent weight gain in kids.

At 4 years of age, 32 children of overweight mothers and 29 children of normal weight mothers were given a test meal in a controlled laboratory setting. Mouthfuls of food per min at this single meal not only predicted changes in BMI from 4 to 6 years but also changes in sum of skinfolds and total body fat.

As the authors note, rapid eating could well be an innate (genetic?) trait related to food reward and it will be interesting to see if slow eating can be taught and if this would reduce the risk for weight gain. Of course you can always trick your 4-year old into eating slow by providing slow foods that take longer to eat. 

In the meantime, if your 4-year old prefers to play with her food and takes forever to finish, you can at least comfort yourself with the notion that she is probably not in danger of having to worry about excess weight any time soon.

AMS
Toronto, Ontario

Today’s post is about the problem of “helicopter parents”, who bubble wrap their kids in the hope of isolating them from all possible perils, be they physical or emotional.

It is also about how this epidemic of hyper-parenting may be directly contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic.

The post was prompted by an article written by Shannon Proudfoot (CanWest News Sevice), who writes about a new book by Gever Tulley titled 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). Shannon quotes Tulley as saying, “We create a false impression in our minds that children are in peril all the time and everywhere, when in fact, according to the most recent studies, this is the safest time in history for children. There couldn’t be a better time to be running around playing.”

In her article, Shannon mentions other efforts that are calling hyper-parents to their senses like The Dangerous Book for Boys, Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone or the Free-Range-Kids movement.

To me the real paradox is how these very same hyper-vigilant hyper-parents often don’t think twice about the very real and much more probable peril that comes from keeping their kids off the streets (and in front of TV screens). Indeed, these parents appear far more concerned about the highly improbable chances of their kids becoming drug addicts on the local play ground than worrying about the much more probable chances of their kids become junk-food and sugar-pop addicts from the foods they feed them.

Indeed, it appears that the fear of “germs” exceeds by several orders of magnitude any valid concerns about obesity, diabetes, sleep apnea, or any of the other very real dangers of inactivity and crappy diets to which they happily expose their kids everyday.

Clearly parents appear far more concerned about the chances that their kids will fall into the hands of pedophiles lurking on FaceBook than from the much more likely damage from watching 1000s of junkfood ads on TV.

I guess if we were all far less concerned about the possibility of our kids scraping their knees, breaking a limb, or falling off a fence and actually encouraged them to confidently ignore the “five second rule”, we’d probably end up with a generation of far stronger and healthier kids than the bubble-wrapped, hyper-coddled generation of over-scheduled wimpy progeny we have now.

So let those kids range free and make sure they eat their germs!

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

Back in 1997, I read a most interesting piece by Ann Gibbons, a correspondent for Science magazine, on why human females live so long after they stop reproducing. Based on studies of African hunter gatherers, it seems that the evolutionary purpose of why women live after menopause is to make sure their grandchildren eat.

Simply put, the reasoning goes that while younger (fertile) women are busy having or nursing their constant stream of young ones, the grandmothers, by stopping to have kids of their own, now have plenty of time to look after all their grandchildren to make sure they do okay. All of this makes evolutionary sense, as by looking after their grandkids, grandmas increase the survival and propagation of their own genes (yes, genes are “selfish”).

While most parents are well aware of the challenge of getting grandparent to stop feeding the kids, there is now actually a new study that shows just how having grandmas around can increase your kid’s risk for obesity.

The paper by Anna Pearce and colleagues from the UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK, published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity, looks at the relationship between formal and informal childcare on the risk of overweight and obesity in early years.

Data on a UK cohort of 12,354 kids from the UK Millennium Cohort Study was examined with a particular emphasis on infant feeding as a potential mediator between childcare in infancy and overweight at age three.

After controlling for confounders, children who were cared for in “informal” childcare between the age of 9 months and 3 years were 15% more likely to be overweight than those cared for only by a parent. This risk increased to 35% if the kids were in in full-time informal childcare.

At this point it may be important to point out that 75% of this “informal” childcare was in fact delivered by grandparents and I am guessing that this mainly involved Grandmas rather than Grandpas. 

Interestingly, this risk of informal childcare was limited to children from more advantaged groups, i.e. kids whose mothers were from a managerial or professional background (25% higher risk) or had a degree (43% higher risk).

In contrast, there was no association between “formal” childcare and overweight. (Guess the daycare centre doesn’t really care about propagating grandma’s genes). 

Although the study does not directly show that grandmas feeding grandkids is the problem, the authors do speculate that indulgence of children and lack of physical exercise when kids are looked after by their grandparents may well be two possible explanations.

I have often said that grandparents can well be the ultimate “intimate saboteurs” when it comes to trying to control your kid’s weight. But I guess we can’t real blame Grandma for simply doing what’s in her nature.

I’d certainly love to hear from any grandmas out there or from those who think grandma’s endless supply of “treats” may be part of the problem. I am also intrigued by what readers may think about why this “grandma” effect was limited to kids with better educated moms.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

Hat tip to Kavita for pointing out this article!

Despite the wide-spread concern about the health impact of the childhood obesity epidemic, there is actually not much data that directly shows how this excess weight may affect mortality.

Such data is now available at least for native American kids, from a study by Paul Franks (National Institutes of Health, Phoenix, AZ) and colleagues, just published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers analysed data from a cohort of 4857 American Indian (Pima or Tohono O’odham Indian) children without diabetes (mean age, 11.3 years) born between 1945 and 1984.

During a median follow-up period of around 24 years, death rates from endogenous causes among children in the highest quartile of BMI were more than double those among children in the lowest BMI quartile.

Similarly, rates of death from endogenous causes among children in the highest quartile of glucose intolerance were 73% higher than those among children in the lowest quartile and childhood hypertension was significantly associated with a 60% increased risk of premature death from endogenous causes.

Thus, at least in native Americans, childhood obesity is a significant risk factor for premature death - certainly a warning for those who believe that early obesity is something you can simply grow out of.

Given the raging epidemic of childhood obesity amongst the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis populations in Canada, these data should certainly prompt decisive action to address obesity amongst its native peoples.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

So, as Michelle Obama yesterday announced her childhood obesity initiative, another piece of news on childhood obesity crowded the news wires.

This was a study by Sarah Anderson (Ohio State) and Robert Whitaker (Temple) published as an early release in Pediatrics.

The researchers performed a cross-sectional analysis of a nationally representative sample of 8550 four-year-old US children who were assessed in 2005 in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.

The study focussed on the relationship between obesity and three household routines: regularly eating the evening meal as a family (>5 nights per week); obtaining adequate nighttime sleep on weekdays (10.5 hours per night); and having limited screen-viewing (television, video, digital video disk) time on weekdays (2 hours/day).

Analyses were adjusted for the child’s race/ethnicity, maternal obesity, maternal education, household income, and living in a single-parent household.

While the prevalence of obesity was 14.3% among children exposed to all 3 routines (14.5% of the sample), it was 24.5% among those exposed to none of the routines (12.4%).

The odds of obesity associated with exposure to all 3, any 2, or only 1 routine (compared with none) were 0.63, 0.64, and 0.84, respectively.

So if you do have kids ask yourself:

1) Do we regularly sit down for supper as a family?
2) Do my kids regularly get at least 10.5 hrs of sleep?
3) Do my kids have less than 2 hrs of screen time on weekdays?

A “no” to all of the above, probably puts your kids in the high-risk category, a “yes” to all of the above, and your kids are probably doing fine.

Now comes the tough part, i.e. wether or not, if you are not doing all of the above, simply doing these three things will actually change your kids risk for obesity. Or in other words, if you did nothing else, except sit down for dinner, have the kids in bed by 8.30, and limit their screen time, would your kids actually have healthy weights?

I am guessing that it will take far more than that. In fact I would not at all be surprised if the families that do any of the above were probably quite different from the families that don’t. I would indeed expect that these families are different in so many ways that really, these three factors are probably just “markers” rather than the actual explanation for the lower obesity risk.

Indeed, if you did have the time and parenting skills to ensure that your whole family sits down for supper, your kids don’t watch too much TV, and are off to bed at bedtime, then you are probably also doing a lot of other things right.

On the other hand, if your family meals are chaotic, you have no control over your kids’ screen time, and they are still running around at midnight, there are probably other issues that need to be addressed.

So while the findings are interesting (and by no means surprising), I am not exactly sure how they will help us address the childhood epidemic.

Perhaps a well-designed intervention study will show wether or not simply adopting these three “routines” will actually make a difference.

I certainly appreciate any comments or opinions on whether or not any of my readers think this will work.

AMS
Hamburg, Germany