Home > Healthy Parenting > June
2008
Posted on June 24, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
Summer’s here, kids are off to camp, and nutrition’s out the window. Tara Parker-Pope of
The New York Times Well blog shares her story:
It was at summer camp a few years ago that she first experienced the culinary joy of cheese fries, which can pack 800 or more calories in a serving. Her camp is typical of those around the country: days packed with archery, swimming and adventure climbing; menus packed with soft drinks, burgers, chicken nuggets and, once a week, cheese fries.
Camp food is just one of the summertime nutrition challenges for parents these days. While childhood health advocates often blame schools for poor nutrition and a lack of physical activity, the problem often gets worse in the summer. Last year, The American Journal of Public Health published a provocative study showing that schools may be taking too much of the blame for the childhood obesity epidemic.
Data from kindergarteners and first graders found that body mass index increased two to three times as fast in summer as during the regular school year. Minority children were especially vulnerable, as were children who were already overweight.
Notably, even children who were too thin and needed to gain weight appeared to have better eating habits during the school year. They actually gained more weight while in school and less in the summer.
Wow, that’s some menu! Not exactly health-promoting. Just check out these posts:
What kind of camp is this, Camp Whatcha-Gonna-Die-From? My goodness!
Posted on June 23, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
Four Ohio parents are suing baby bottle-makers for using the harmful chemical bisphenol A. The
Associated Press reports:
The complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court alleges the companies knew that a chemical known as bisphenol A was associated with health problems but didn't disclose the risk. It cites scientific studies that conclude BPA, as the chemical is also known, seeps from bottles and sippy-cups into liquid.
Seeking to ease public concerns about any health hazards, a federal health official told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee last week that the level of BPA exposure a person would receive from a plastic bottle is safe. Many of the studies that have reported higher levels were conducted under unrealistic conditions, said Dr. Norris Alderson, the Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for science.
"Although our review is ongoing, there's no reason to recommend consumers stop using products with (bisphenol A)," he said.
I’m sure the bottle-makers have some sort of contingency plan for all this. Social responsibility, what social responsibility?
Posted on June 20, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
Elizabeth Cohen of CNN has a compiled a list of requests parents have made over vaccinations. Take a look:
Five years ago, Kathye Petters-Armitage's first child received the exact vaccinations on the exact schedule recommended by her pediatrician.
But when she gave birth to her second child, Petters-Armitage had a change of heart.
In the intervening two years, she'd read a lot about concerns that vaccines cause autism and decided to ask her pediatrician to give her new baby fewer shots spread out over a longer period of time.
"I wasn't a hundred percent convinced there was a link between autism and vaccines," said Petters-Armitage, of Santa Clarita, California. "But I didn't want to be one of those parents who found out the hard way."
Pediatricians say they've seen a dramatic increase in the number of parents who, like Petters-Armitage, want to make changes in the vaccine schedule set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics, a schedule once considered by many pediatricians to be sacred and largely immutable.
- Delaying the first hepatitis B shot
- Not doing some shots at all
- Checking for 'titers' before giving booster shots
- Spreading the vaccines out over a longer period of time
- Splitting up combined shots
This is a lightening rod of an issue. Here’s a
DiseaseProof post on the topic:
Mandatory Vaccinations: The Choice Should Be Yours...
Posted on June 19, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
A new study has determined that calling a child overweight or forcing a diet down their throat doesn’t work, but parents creating a healthier home environment does. Here’s the abstract from
Pediatrics:
OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to explore whether parents of overweight adolescents who recognize that their children are overweight engage in behaviors that are likely to help their adolescents with long-term weight management.
METHODS: The study population included overweight adolescents (BMI ≥ 85th percentile) who participated in Project EAT (Eating Among Teens) I (1999) and II (2004) and their parents who were interviewed by telephone in Project EAT I. Cross-sectional analyses were conducted with 314 adolescent-parent dyads, and longitudinal analyses were completed with 170 dyads.
RESULTS: Parents who correctly classified their children as overweight were no more likely than parents who did not correctly classify their children as overweight to engage in the following potentially helpful behaviors: having more fruits/vegetables and fewer soft drinks, salty snacks, candy, and fast food available at home; having more family meals; watching less television during dinner; and encouraging children to make healthful food choices and be more physically active. However, parents who recognized that their children were overweight were more likely to encourage them to diet. Parental encouragement to diet predicted poorer adolescent weight outcomes 5 years later, particularly for girls. Parental classification of their children's weight status did not predict child weight status 5 years later.
CONCLUSIONS: Accurate classification of child overweight status may not translate into helpful behaviors and may lead to unhealthy behaviors such as encouragement to diet. Instead of focusing on weight per se, it may be more helpful to direct efforts toward helping parents provide a home environment that supports healthful eating, physical activity, and well-being.
I think Dr. Fuhrman would agree with this. He explores this topic in his book
Disease-Proof Your Child. Check out this excerpt:
Parents are entrusted with the responsibility of securing the selection of healthy foods for the family and preparing the food in a way that makes it desirable. Children are responsible for deciding how much they eat. If they are in an environmental of healthful foods they will have no problem regulating variety and timing. They can choose what they eat, when they eat, and if they will eat. Don’t use food as a reward or punishment. Don’t offer a treat because the child was good or ate well. Offer healthy treats as part of the normal well-balanced diet.
So yeah,
raising your child on French fries isn’t a “healthy” environment.
Posted on June 17, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
This is encouraging. Fruit has overtaken cookies as the number one snack given to children under the age of 6. Nanci Hellmich of
USA TODAY reports:
Parents seem to be serving healthier products, which may partly explain why the number of overweight children is holding steady, Balzer says.
Recent government statistics show that 32% of children and teens ages 2 to 19 — about 23 million — were overweight or obese in 2003-2006 compared with 29% in 1999. The increase is not considered statistically significant.
"Women's weight has also stabilized, and since mothers are the primary food providers and role models, these two trends may be related," says Karen Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer for Weight Watchers. She says it's "a whole lot better" for parents to serve their children fruit or yogurt and water than soft drinks and cookies.
The types of snacks parents feed their young children is critical because studies suggest snacks account for about a quarter of a child's daily calories, and snacking behavior sets the pattern for lifelong eating habits, says Boston nutritionist Elizabeth Ward, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Feeding Your Baby and Toddler. "Snacks present an enormous opportunity for good nutrition."
Although, beyond the fruit. Parents are still serving up a lot of junk. More from the report:
I don’t have any kids—that I know of—but when I do, I imagine I’ll be quite the food sentinel. No milk and fruit snacks for little Gerry!
Posted on June 16, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that hospitals in the United States fail to adequately promote breast-feeding. The
Associated Press is on it:
About a quarter of hospitals reported giving formula or some other supplement to more than half of their healthy, full-term newborns. The practice was common even when mothers were able and willing to breast-feed, Dee said.
Of hospitals who gave supplements, 30 percent gave sugar water and 15 percent gave water.
Experts say there are no good nutritional reasons to use those, but it is commonly done to quiet crying babies separated from their mother. Sometimes it's done to test a baby's ability to feed - even though such a test is usually not necessary, Dee said.
Breast-feeding is considered beneficial to both mothers and their babies. Breast milk contains antibodies that can protect newborns from infections, and studies have found breast-fed babies are less likely to become overweight that those fed with formula.
For more breast-feeding news, check out
DiseaseProof’s healthy parenting category.
Posted on June 13, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
Thanks to
Diet Blog for finding thing one! Apparently
one British mother thinks it’s totally fine to feed her 18-month year old at diet almost entirely of French fries. You got to see it, to believe it. James Tozer of
The Daily Mail reports:
But despite being warned her daughter's future health is at risk, her mother Angela insists the toddler will grow up just fine.
Miss Boswell, 33, said persuading Courtney to eat healthier foods has proved almost impossible.
She said: 'Most of all she loves chips. I ate a lot of chips in chocolate sauce when I was pregnant with her so maybe it comes from that.
'I think she'll be fine when she's older - I'm not worried at all.
'People say she's getting podgy because her tummy sticks out a bit, but it's just a bit of puppy fat and she will grow out of it.'
Courtney, who weighs 2st 2lbs, or half a stone more than the average 18-month-old, will this week feature in Wednesday's ITV1 documentary, Britain's Biggest Babies.
The toddler, whose diet also occasionally extends to chocolate, crisps, cereal and Coca-Cola, is shown devouring a portion of chips in just under ten minutes.
Clearly, this story is a lightening rod. It certainly shot Dr. Fuhrman out of a cannon! Here’s what he had to say:
If I was a child welfare judge, I would lock up this mother in a jail cell with a copy Disease-Proof Your Child and not release her until the book is read and she was quizzed on its contents.
This woman is a freaking a whack job! It’s hard to believe people like this exactly exist! She needs to hear this podcast—stat!
Dr. Fuhrman on Getting Children to Eat Well.
Posted on June 12, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
Refined carbohydrates like sugar and processed grains will sabotage your health, leading to a myriad of afflictions. Dr. Fuhrman explains:
Medical investigations clearly show the dangers of consuming the quantity of processed foods that we do. And because these refined grains lack fiber and nutrient density to turn down our appetite, they also cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and significantly increased cancer risk.1
Maybe that’s why Sarah Kamrath’s son, five-year-old Lucas, has never had any refined sugar. This exclusive from
Mothering:
I will be the first to admit that completely avoiding all refined sugar is not the easiest thing to do. I also understand that it might not be desirable for every parent—a little sugar here and there isn't going to do any real harm, however, I have also found that most parents would like to avoid sugar as much as possible in their children's diet.
So for anyone who is interested in trying to limit empty, sugar-filled calories and get their children to eat more nutritious foods, the following are some practices I have found useful…
…We have a rule in our house that you have to try something before you say no. When Lukas says he doesn't want a certain food and I make him try one bite, many times he'll look at me and say "Mmmm, I like that." If he doesn't, I won't force him to eat it, but I will continue to re-introduce it to him one bite at a time. By repeatedly offering healthy foods to children, the foods eventually become more familiar and your child is likely to develop a taste for them. In fact, research shows that it can take up to 10 times of tasting the same food before this happens, so be patient.
Also, if your child complains about a certain food and refuses to eat it, try not to quickly substitute it with one of his favorites. If he knows that when he complains and makes a fuss that you will simply prepare him something else to eat, then be prepared to do just that. If you explain to him that this is dinner and if he doesn't eat it then he will be hungry (and you are consistent with this message), then he is much more likely to give it a real try. Don't worry—he won't starve!
Kudos to Sarah! That’s one determined mom. Any of you have similar stories?
Continue Reading...
Posted on June 11, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
It seems rapid weight-gain as an infant can lead to obesity later in life.
WebMD reports:
In a separate study from Finland, researchers found little evidence of an obesity link associated with rapid weight gain before the age of 2. But rapid weight gain after the second birthday was found to be a risk factor for obesity later in life.
The study included 885 Finnish men and 1,032 women between the ages of 56 and 70, whose childhood weights and heights were known from medical records.
Rapid weight gain before age 2 was associated with increases in lean mass while rapid gains later in childhood predicted higher body fat in adulthood.
In the third study, rapid weight gain during the first six months of life was found to increase obesity risk later in childhood.
Researchers from London's Institute of Child Health investigated the associations between weight gain during different periods in infancy and later body composition in 105 boys and 129 girls living in the U.K.
The three studies are not the first to link early growth to later obesity.
For more baby news, check out
DiseaseProof’s healthy parenting category.
Posted on June 6, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
The FDA says silver-colored dental fillings may pose a mercury risk for pregnant women, children, and fetuses.
Reuters reports:
As part of the settlement with several consumer advocacy groups, the FDA agreed to alert consumers about the potential risks on its website and to issue a more specific rule next year for fillings that contain mercury, FDA spokeswoman Peper Long said.
Millions of Americans have the fillings, or amalgams, to patch cavities in their teeth.
"Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses," the FDA said in a notice on its Web site.
"Pregnant women and persons who may have a health condition that makes them more sensitive to mercury exposure, including individuals with existing high levels of mercury bioburden, should not avoid seeking dental care, but should discuss options with their health practitioner," the agency said.
Actually, I’m in the process of getting mine switched to white fillings.
Posted on June 6, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
New research claims that parents of overweight kids are all talk and no action when it comes to getting their children healthy. More from
WebMD:
Minneapolis-based researchers have found that parents need to "talk less and do more" when encouraging their kids to become fit and trim. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, PhD, MPH, RD, of the division of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues found that parents who correctly recognized that their child had a weight problem talked with their kids about dieting, but this was not helpful.
Previous studies have suggested that parents do not correctly recognize if their child is overweight. Furthermore, little research has been done to determine how parents act when they correctly perceive their child's weight status.
Neumark-Sztainer's team explored whether parents of overweight teens who correctly recognized their child's weight status engaged in behaviors that helped their child's long-term weight management.
I’m no expert—or a parent for that matter—but I’d imagine, like everything else, its all about setting an example. I think Dr. Fuhrman would agree:
No rules only for children. If the parents are not willing to follow the rules set for the house, they should not be imposed on the children…Setting an example supported by both parents is the most important and most effective way for your children to develop a healthy attitude toward food.
Plus, parents and children getting healthy together has to be a great bonding experience—right?
Posted on June 4, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
Kids’ diets appear to be getting worse—kind of conflicts
the news that childhood obesity is leveling off—because
a new study claims sugary drinks now make up to 15% of children’s daily calories. Kathleen Doheny of
HealthDay News reports:
Children aged 2 to 19 now take in up to 15 percent of their total daily calories from drinks that contain sugar, a finding that confirms previous research and suggests consumption is rising.
It's known from previous studies that children and teens in the United States drink a lot of sugary beverages, said study author Dr. Y. Claire Wang, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, in New York City.
"We show that the consumption trend continues to increase," she said, and that it's occurring mostly at home.
Experts recommend restricting both sugary beverages such as soft drinks and 100 percent fruit juices, to avoid excess "empty" calories.
Wang's team analyzed 24-hour dietary recall records from children or their parents, trying to determine how many calories a day came from sugary beverages and 100 percent fruit juices.
They used data from two national surveys, conducted from 1988 to 1994 and from 1999 to 2004. The first survey had almost 10,000 participants, the second, almost 11,000.
Overall, daily calories from sugary beverages or 100 percent fruit juices rose from 242 calories a day to 270 during the two study periods.
Scary news because—despite the hype and their often hefty calorie-load—soda, sports drinks, and most juices are poor sources of nutrition. Check out their rankings via Dr. Fuhrman’s
Food Scoring Guide:
I think you’d be better off eating air!
Posted on June 3, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
According to a new study giving babies vitamin D may help prevent type-1 diabetes. Anne Harding of
Reuters explains:
"This is just another reason why current recommendations regarding vitamin D supplementation should be rigorously adhered to," Dr. Christos S. Zipitis told Reuters Health.
Vitamin D is produced in the skin with sun exposure. Deficiency in the nutrient can lead to a host of health problems, Zipitis said. Because breast milk typically contains little vitamin D, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends vitamin D supplements for nursing infants and UK public health authorities say that all children should receive the supplements for at least the first two years of life.
There are a number of clues suggesting a link between low vitamin D levels and type 1 diabetes, Zipitis of Stockport National Health Service Foundation Trust and Dr. A. K. Akobeng of Booth Hall Children's Hospital in Manchester, UK, note in their report in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
The investigators reviewed all published research on vitamin D supplementation and diabetes risk. Overall, they found, infants who were supplemented with Vitamin D were 29 percent less likely to develop type 1 diabetes than children who had not received supplements.
For more parenting news, check out
DiseaseProof’s healthy parenting category.
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