Women’s health dot gov, a project of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health published an extensive article, on Dec 30th on a study of childhood obesity and the increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.

What follows is a summary of the full article written by Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter.

A new study has found that the length of time a person carries excess weight directly contributes to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes.

Given that many of today’s young children are carrying a significant amount of excess weight from an early age, their chances of developing diabetes at some time in their lives is greater.

Dr. John E. Anderson, Vice President of Medicine and Science for the American Diabetes Association, said that research findings are pointing to what is now happening in our society, with more young children and teenagers diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than ever before.

“A disease that used to be confined to older people is creeping into high schools,” Anderson said. “At best, this is alarming. This obesity epidemic we have is fueling an epidemic of diabetes in young people.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 1980 obesity among children and adolescents has almost tripled.  Today, almost one in five American kids ages 2 to 19 are obese. That is about 12.5 million kids.

Researchers have found that the time spent carrying extra weight matters as much as the amount of extra weight.

“If you’re born in the year 2000 and the current trends continue unchecked, you will have a one in three chance of developing type 2 diabetes,” Anderson said. That risk increases for certain ethnic minorities, including African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics.

Diabetes is a systemic disease, and by its nature can affect almost every part of a person’s body. Someone with diabetes has a shorter life expectancy, and on any given day has twice the risk for dying as a person of similar age without diabetes, according to the CDC.

“We worry this will be the first generation of Americans who don’t live as long as their parents did,” Anderson said.

“What can be done to alter the potentially grim outlook? To start losing weight, kids need to adopt a set of healthy living skills that become part of their daily routine,” said Sheri Colberg-Ochs, an exercise science professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who works with the American Diabetes Association.

“It’s not just the weight, per se,” Colberg-Ochs said. “It’s the lifestyle they’ve developed that caused them to gain the extra weight.”

First, kids need to be taught to eat healthy foods and to avoid foods that are fatty, sugar-packed or heavily processed, she said.

“When food is a lot more refined, it’s lacking in a lot of vitamins and minerals that are essential to your effective metabolic function,” she said. “Kids eat empty calories, and those calories go straight to weight gain.

But they also need to become more physically active, she said. Exercise has been shown to both battle obesity and help better control blood glucose levels in the body.

“Those two things alone would probably solve the problem of childhood obesity, were society to pursue them vigorously,” Colberg-Ochs said.

(SOURCES: John E. Anderson, M.D., vice president, medicine and science, American Diabetes Association; Sheri Colberg-Ochs, Ph.D., professor, exercise science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Va., and adjunct professor, internal medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk, Va.)

The Environmental Working Group, suggests you take the following list with you when shopping for breakfast cereals.

EWG  is a private, not for profit organization that uses the power of public information to protect public health and the environment.

The 10 Worst Children’s Cereals-don’t meet nutrition guidelines:

Kellogg’s Honey Smacks

Post Golden Crisp

Kellogg’s Froot Loops Marshmallows

Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch OPPS All Berries

Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch Original

Quaker Oats Oh’s

Kellogg’s Smorz

Kellogg’s Apple Jacks

Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries

Kellogg’s Froot Loops Original

Best Cereals-are free of pesticides and genetically modified ingredients:

• Ambrosial Granola: Athenian Harvest Muesli
• Go Raw: Live Granola, Live Chocolate Granola, and Simple Granola
• Grandy Oats: Mainely Maple Granola, Cashew Raisin Granola, and Swiss Style Muesli
• Kaia Foods: Buckwheat Granola Dates & Spices and Buckwheat Granola Raisin Cinnamon
• Laughing Giraffe: Cranberry Orange Granola
• Lydia’s Organics: Apricot Sun, Berry Good, Grainless Apple, Sprouted Cinnamon, and Vanilla Crunch.
• Nature’s Path Organic: Optimum Banana Almond, Optimum Cranberry Ginger, Corn Puffs, Kamut Puffs, Millet Puffs, and Rice Puffs.

Good Cereals-easier to find but may include ingredients that are genetically modified or grown with pesticides:

• Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats: Unfrosted Bite- Size, Frosted Big Bite, Frosted Bite-Size, Frosted Little Bite
• General Mills Cheerios Original
• General Mills Kix Original
• Post Shredded Wheat (all varieties)
• Post Grape-Nuts Flakes
• Quaker Oats Oatmeal Squares Cinnamon
• Post Bran Flakes**
• Post Honey Bunches of Oats with Vanilla Bunches

Some cereals are better than others. When selecting cereals look for:

• Cereals with a short ingredient list (added vitamins and minerals are okay).
• Cereals high in fiber.
• Cereals with few or no added sugars, including honey, molasses, fruit juice concentrate, brown sugar, corn sweetener, sucrose, lactose, glucose, high- fructose corn syrup and malt syrup (USDA 2006a).

Cereals that meet these criteria can usually be found on the top shelves of the cereal aisle. They are harder to reach and not at eye level but often less expensive.

Dear Parents,

I am writing to ask your input on story lines we are developing for programs for “Can Do” Street that combat obesity before it becomes an issue for a child, not after he or she develops a serious weight problem.

We want to begin our obesity prevention programs by targeting young children who are learning to make food choices based on what is prepared for them wherever they are at mealtime or snack time.

Please share how you influence your child’s food choices, so that more often than not, he or she chooses healthy foods over high caloric and /or fatty foods.

What methods do you use for encouraging your child to make healthy choices when choosing from a restaurant menu or ordering in a fast food place?

Do you talk to you child about foods that are always good to eat and foods that need to be a sometime treat, not for every day?

Do you involve your child in meal prep and grocery shopping? If so, do you use this time to talk about how the foods you are buying or preparing will help them to grow strong and fit?

Please email me at jeanc@candostreet.com with what works for you.

If you have a particular area that you have dealt with successfully, such as a picky eater, please share how you have gotten them to make healthier food choices.

I look forward to hearing from you. I welcome any and all suggestions that can help with getting programs out there to prevent obesity.

Best,

Jean

Before you reach for a sugary drink for yourself or a member of your family think about this…drinking one 20 ounce soda a day translates to eating 50 pounds of sugar a year!

Last week New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley unveiled a new Health Department education campaign to fight obesity in NYC. “The majority of New York City adults are now overweight or obese, as are 4 in 10 elementary school children and the health consequences are staggering,” said Commissioner Farley. “Sugary drinks are the largest single source of added sugar in the diet, and a child’s risk of obesity increases with every additional daily serving of a sugary drink.”

A TV spot will air on major broadcast and cable TV stations over the next two months reminding New Yorkers about how sugary drinks can lead to obesity, which can cause diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and some cancers. This latest installment of the NYC Health Department’s “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign was launched at an event in Times Square commemorating the nation’s first Food Day, a day modeled after the popular Earth Day, but focused on healthy food and eating.

In addition to the TV spot, bilingual subway posters will ask New Yorkers to think about how far they would need to walk to burn off the calories from drinking just one sugary drink. A YouTube video shows a man taking that calorie-burning walk across town and asks, “Are You Pouring on the Pounds?”

One message of the campaign states that to burn off the 650 calories of a medium frozen vanilla coffee drink one would need to walk 8 miles. The distance is based on a 160 pound person walking 3.5 mph.

There are many healthier alternatives to a sugary drink.  The “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign encourages New Yorkers to avoid sugary beverages and quench their thirst with water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead.

Could your town or city use a “Pouring on the Pounds Campaign” that talks to the cold and hot sugary drink?

In the Journal of Pediatrics news release of Oct. 6, 2011 there is a report on a study illustrating that food commercials have a strong impact on children’s food choices, but parents can lessen the effects of these ads.

The study encompassed 75 children aged 3 to 5 watching two cartoons, with a commercial between each cartoon. Half the children viewed a commercial for apple slices with dipping sauce and half viewed a commercial for French fries.

When the cartoons and commercials were over, the children were given the choice of a coupon for one of the advertised food items, with input from their parents. Half of the parents were told to encourage their child to select the healthy food, while the other half were told to remain neutral.

Of the children who viewed the commercial for French fries, 71 percent chose the coupon for French fries if their parents remained neutral, while only 55 percent chose the coupon for French fries if their parents encouraged them to choose the healthy food.

Of the children who saw the commercial for apple slices, 46 percent chose the coupon for French fries if their parents remained neutral, while only 33 percent picked the coupon for French fries if their parents encouraged them to make the healthy choice.

“Children were clearly influenced by the commercials they saw; however, parents are not powerless,” noted study author Dr. Christopher Ferguson of Texas A&M International University, in a journal news release.

While the impact of food commercials on children is considerable, Ferguson said that, “Parents have an advantage if they are consistent with their long-term message about healthy eating.”