Epidemic of obesity among children and adolescents

[Gert van der Hoek]

Flow of empty calories into children's food supply must be reduced

October 1, 2010

With over 23 million children and adolescents in the US overweight or obese, the risks for many chronic diseases continue to increase. An article in the October issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association examines the diets of American youth and finds some disturbing results.

"The epidemic of obesity among children and adolescents is now widely regarded as one of the most important public health problems in the US," commented Jill Reedy, PhD, MPH, RD, and Susan M. Krebs-Smith, PhD, MPH, RD, both of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD.

"Most experts agree that the solution will involve changes in both diet and physical activity, in order to affect energy balance. For diet, this means a reduction in energy from current consumption levels…

This paper identifies the major sources of overall energy and empty calories, providing context for dietary guidance that could specifically focus on limiting calories from these sources and for changes in the food environment. Product reformulation alone is not sufficient—the flow of empty calories into the food supply must be reduced".

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[Anne]

Re: Epidemic of obesity among children and adolescents

Pesticide in womb may promote obesity, study finds


DDT breakdown product appears to be an ?obesogen,? but only in youngsters of normal-weight moms


By Janet Raloff
Web edition : <acronym class="anonymous print" title="9:20 pm">Tuesday, October 5th, 2010</acronym>
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One-quarter of babies born to women who had relatively high concentrations of a DDT-breakdown product in their blood grew unusually fast for at least the first year of life, a study finds. Not only is this prevalence of accelerated growth unusually high, but it?s also a worrisome trend since such rapid growth during early infancy has ? in other studies ? put children on track to become obese. Affected babies in the new study weighed no more than normal at birth, so growth in the womb was unaffected. Their moms were also normal weight ? which is significant because babies born to overweight and obese women sometimes undergo rapid growth.
Carried out in Spain, the new ? and still ongoing ? study recruited more than 500 women to take part, beginning in the first trimester of their pregnancies. Blood collected upon entry was assayed for the presence of several common persistant chlorinated pollutants: DDT, its breakdown product DDE, hexachlorobenzene (a now-banned fungicide that still occurs inadvertently as a byproduct during the manufacturing of other chlorinated compounds), beta-hexachlorohexane (a contaminant of the insecticide lindane), and any of several dioxinlike polychlorinated biphenyls (fluids used as electrical insulators). Researchers continue to follow the babies born into the study (most of whom are now around 4 years old).
The study probed for correlations between pollutants in the moms? blood and growth differences among their children. Only DDE exhibited such an association.
Babies born to normal-weight moms who had exhibited elevated blood-DDE levels (in the upper 25 percent of all participants) were twice as likely to grow rapidly during their first 6 months than were infants born to the least-exposed women (with DDE concentrations in the lowest 25 percent). By 14 months old, children whose exposures to DDE in the womb had been in the top 50 percent were four times as likely to be overweight ? as indicated by a high body-mass-index, or BMI, score ? when compared to children with lower exposures.
Although the heavier children were not obese, they will be followed to see if they become so, notes Michelle Mendez of the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, in Barcelona, who led the new analyses.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gen...cide_in_womb_may_promote_obesity,_study_finds

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[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: Epidemic of obesity among children and adolescents

New Weight Loss Plan for U.S. Obesity Crisis

Plan Would Cut Fast-Food Ads/Sales, Promote Activity and Healthy Foods

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

May 8, 2012 -- Obesity in America is a crisis that threatens national security -- and urgent action is needed, says the Institute of Medicine.

The IOM's plan: Totally change the way Americans approach exercise and nutrition.

How? By asking every single American to become involved, says Daniel R. Glickman, chair of the IOM committee that issued the 478-page plan. Glickman, former secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton, is executive director of congressional programs for the Aspen Institute.

"When you have a national epidemic of this size, it is in the hands of every individual to make this happen," Glickman said today in a presentation to the CDC's Weight of the Nation Conference in Washington, D.C.

"When people understand the consequences of not taking action, they will understand," IOM committee member Christina Economos, PhD, of Tufts University, said at the meeting. "This will require bold actions from all sections of society."

The IOM report "issues a blunt, strong challenge that the obesity threat is imminent and enduring to our children and to our nation. It holds everyone accountable," said James Marks, MD, MPH, senior vice president for health at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the IOM study.

Part of this "threat" is economic. The estimated cost of obesity is $190 billion a year in the U.S., Marks said at a news teleconference. And part of the threat is that the two-thirds of Americans who are overweight or obese are at risk of diabetes, cancer, and early death.

What can we do about it? The IOM report spells out a detailed, extensive, and expensive plan. The plan calls for individual, community, school, and workplace action. It also calls on government to confront entrenched interests in revising agricultural subsidies, restricting the advertising of sugared beverages and fast foods, and regulating restaurants that offer calorie-dense foods to children.

"These things all must be done and done now if we are going to roll back this problem," Glickman said. "The question used to be, 'Can we reverse the obesity epidemic?' The question now is, 'Will we?'"

The IOM Obesity Plan

On the face of it, the IOM plan is simple. There are five main goals:

- Make physical activity an integral and routine part of life.

- Create food and beverage environments that ensure that healthy food and beverage options are the routine, easy choice.

- Transform messages about physical activity and nutrition.

- Expand the roles of health care providers, insurers, and employers.

- Make schools a national focal point.

Read more: http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20120508/weight-loss-plan-for-us-obesity-crisis