Obesity in children and carbohydrate intake: Review of a current study

Obesity in children and carbohydrate intake: Review of a current study

I think you can say with certainty that we all know that obesity in this country is a problem. Sometimes we may deny what an enormous problem it is, but if you take care and look around, find that we have an epidemic in our hands. This will paralyze our nation in relation to rising health costs, incapacity to work and general lack of joy and vitality in their own lives. It is not only expensive, it's just sad.

The more frightful situation on the horizon are the thousands of children who face this terrible scenario at such a young age. Pre-diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels are now diagnosed in children. This is often directly related to their weight. It's not just the older children. Children aged 3 or 4 see these increased numbers in their laboratory results. The question is: what do we do about it?

After my school leaving certificate, I worked for some time in the WIC Clinic (Women, Infant and Children). My job was to advise parents with their young children and pregnant women with high risk about healthy eating. For some, this was the only time that they ever received such individual training. It was a rewarding experience. Unfortunately we often saw how small children quickly climbed on their growth charts. The system would mark these people and every visit we would remind you to discuss opportunities to reduce calorie intake. It was often a recommendation to switch to low -fat milk, to reduce portion sizes or to drink less juice. Sometimes these answers worked and sometimes not. To be honest, we didn't always know what the right solution was. The main goal was to somehow convey to these parents that something had to change. A simple instruction like "eating healthy" would not change it.

That is why I noticed this new study that was recently published. It brought me back to these WIC days and let me think about how I would address these customers differently if I had known a more direct and positive recommendation with known health results. They see, people often forget that the recommendations for working in public healthcare must be easy and easy to remember. I don't say that people are stupid or don't worry about it, but they are not necessarily in my office on my own will and will. You have to be there and that's why I caught it for a few short minutes. If we can convince them with solutions that work, this is a message to take away.

So back to the study. The premise was to check whether changes in the types of sugar recorded without changing the entire macronutrient or the calorie composition of the food can influence the basic biochemical markers for health. Some of the markers that they examined before and after the diet were sober blood glucose levels, sober insulin levels, cholesterol and the liver enzymes ast and old.

The study design was. They took a group of children aged 6 to 18 with a high BMI and at least another comorbidity (hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, disturbed sober blood sugar, hyperinsulinemia, increased alaninaminaminotransferase or severe acanthosis negricans) and evaluated their typical macronutrient and calorie intake. The aim was to keep this stable together with their weight during the entire study.

On the first day of the study, sober blood samples and an oral glucose tolerance test were administered. After that, you should start a diet with food that was provided exclusively by the clinic. As already mentioned, these foods agreed with their exact absorption of macronutrients. The only change was to replace sugar added, mainly fructose, and to replace other types of carbohydrates with things such as bagels, muesli, fruit, pasta and bread. The entire food sugar and fructose were reduced to 10% or 4% of the total calories. Would this be sufficient to determine changes in general health?

As you can guess you, there were significant effects. Not in 3 months, not in 1 month - but in 10 short days. That is why this study attracted my attention so quickly. If this is the case, as I will probably take (hopefully follow -up studies will continue to confirm this), this is an immediate and simple message to take away that we can give parents and older children themselves. Reduce the added sugar, instead eat other types of carbohydrates (of course with colorful handouts) and see an improvement of your risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

In addition, I found it interesting that the researchers found it difficult to keep the weights of the study participants perfectly stable, namely that they have lost a small percentage of the weight in total, which, according to the researchers, may have only slightly distorted the final results. In a real environment, you have to ask yourself whether when implementing the diet, but without you tell you that you have to check the identical macronutrient absorption so precisely whether weight loss would not be a natural by -product if you simply change the type of carbohydrates you consume.

I will not go into all the exact numerical results here, but you are welcome to read it and the entire study yourself about the link specified at the beginning of this article. It is worth reading.

I think the message to take away is. The types of carbohydrates we consume play a role and they definitely play a role in our young children. We have to get the added sugar out of our diet. I do not say that bagels and muesli are the answer, but we cannot ignore what has become a problem of sophisticated sugar in our diet and especially in the food and products that are advertised for our youth. For those of us in public healthcare, we can use this study as a clear example of a simple, tangible way to improve a person's health. You may not be able to solve every problem, but you can enable a customer to make your way to better health.