Children Eat More Vegetables With Flavoured (additives, sugar coated) Dips

Many parents have a difficult time persuading their preschool-aged children to try vegetables, let alone eat them regularly. 

Food and nutrition researchers have found that by offering a dip flavoured with spices, children were more likely to try vegetables -- including those they had previously rejected.

Jennifer S. Savage

"Less than 10 percent of 4- to 8-year-olds consume the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) recommended daily servings of vegetables," said Jennifer S. Savage, associate director of the Center for Childhood Obesity Research at Penn State.

"Even more striking is that over one-third of children consume no servings of vegetables on a typical day. We wanted to figure out a way to increase vegetable consumption."

According to ChooseMyPlate, a USDA initiative, children between the ages of three and five should be eating one and a half to two cups of vegetables every day. Vegetables provide fiber and necessary nutrients.

They can also replace less healthy food choices and combat obesity because they are less calorie-dense.

Savage and colleagues found that children were three times more likely to refuse eating a vegetable alone than they were to eat the same vegetable when paired with a reduced-fat flavoured dip and the children were twice as likely to reject a vegetable with no dip than they were if given the same vegetable with plain dip.

The researchers report in a recent issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that they worked with 34 children between the ages of 3 and 5 to determine each child's familiarity with vegetables and which were liked or disliked.

The children were then reintroduced to the same vegetables, this time with a dip, and each child's likes and dislikes were reevaluated.

"Repeated exposure is a way to get kids to like new foods," said Savage. "This has been demonstrated in previous studies. But first you have to get them to taste the vegetable. Plus, the servings do not need to be huge -- the key may be to start by offering really small portions."

In as few as four tasting sessions, Savage and colleagues found that preschoolers consumed more of a disliked vegetable when it was paired with a dip flavored with spices than when it was eaten alone.

The children tasted and rated six different vegetables: carrots, cucumbers, celery, green beans, red peppers and yellow squash. After tasting each vegetable, the children were shown three cartoon faces and asked to pick which one best showed how they felt.

Their choices were "yummy," "just okay" and "yucky." The researcher also noted if the child refused to try the sample. "

"In the next session the children were introduced to five different Miracle Whip-based reduced-fat dips, one plain and the other four flavored with different combinations of spices."

"The most well-liked dips were flavoured "pizza" and "ranch;" the least-liked dips were "herb" and "garlic."

After the initial tastings and ratings, the preschoolers were given veggies and dip together. Thirty-one percent of them deemed a vegetable alone to be "yummy," but when paired with a flavored dip 64 percent of the children found the vegetable "yummy."

On the other end of the spectrum, 18 percent of children refused to eat a vegetable by itself, while only six percent would refuse to eat a vegetable when paired with a flavored dip.

In the last part of this study the researchers offered the preschoolers celery and yellow squash, paired with a preferred flavoured dip.

These vegetables were chosen because they were the least liked of the six tested. The children were offered celery one day and squash on a different day.

As expected, overall, the children ate more of each veggie when paired with a dip than when it was served alone.

The amount of squash eaten by the preschoolers more than doubled when paired with a flavoured dip. The quantity of celery eaten increased 62 percent when paired with a flavoured dip.

"Just because a child refuses to taste a vegetable doesn't mean they don't like it," Savage said. "It's foreign -- the key is to try to get them to taste it in a positive light."

Journal Reference: Jennifer S. Savage, Julie Peterson, Michele Marini, Peter L. Bordi, Leann L. Birch. The Addition of a Plain or Herb-Flavoured Reduced-Fat Dip Is Associated with Improved Preschoolers' Intake of Vegetables. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.jand.2013.03.013/div>

Childhood Obesity and Sleep Issues

A sleepless night makes us more likely to reach for doughnuts or pizza than for whole grains and leafy green vegetables, suggests a new study from UC Berkeley that examines the brain regions that control food choices. The findings shed new light on the link between poor sleep and obesity.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), UC Berkeley researchers scanned the brains of 23 healthy young adults, first after a normal night's sleep and next, after a sleepless night.

They found impaired activity in the sleep-deprived brain's frontal lobe, which governs complex decision-making, but increased activity in deeper brain centers that respond to rewards.

Moreover, the participants favoured unhealthy snack and junk foods when they were sleep deprived.

Matthew Walker

"What we have discovered is that high-level brain regions required for complex judgments and decisions become blunted by a lack of sleep, while more primal brain structures that control motivation and desire are amplified," said Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience and senior author of the study published today (Tuesday, Aug. 6) in the journal Nature Communications.

Moreover, he added, "high-calorie foods also became significantly more desirable when participants were sleep-deprived.

This combination of altered brain activity and decision-making may help explain why people who sleep less also tend to be overweight or obese."

Previous studies have linked poor sleep to greater appetites, particularly for sweet and salty foods, but the latest findings provide a specific brain mechanism explaining why food choices change for the worse following a sleepless night, Walker said.

Stephanie Greer

"These results shed light on how the brain becomes impaired by sleep deprivation, leading to the selection of more unhealthy foods and, ultimately, higher rates of obesity," said Stephanie Greer, a doctoral student in Walker's Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory and lead author of the paper.

Another co-author of the study is Andrea Goldstein, also a doctoral student in Walker's lab.

In this newest study, researchers measured brain activity as participants viewed a series of 80 food images that ranged from high-to low-calorie and healthy and unhealthy, and rated their desire for each of the items.

As an incentive, they were given the food they most craved after the MRI scan.

Food choices presented in the experiment ranged from fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries, apples and carrots, to high-calorie burgers, pizza and doughnuts.

The latter are examples of the more popular choices following a sleepless night.

On a positive note, Walker said, the findings indicate that "getting enough sleep is one factor that can help promote weight control by priming the brain mechanisms governing appropriate food choices."

Childhood Obesity: How many extra calories does it take?

Overweight kids may be consuming far more calories than their doctors or parents realize, a new study suggests.

The study, which is published in the July 30 online issue of The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, updates the mathematical model doctors use to calculate the daily calorie needs of children and adolescents.

The new model tries to more accurately estimate the energy requirements for growing girls and boys.

It also accounts for kids' higher metabolisms, relative to adults, and takes into account the drop in physical activity that happens with age as frenetic toddlers turn into sluggish teens.

Lastly, study authors factor in the increased energy required to maintain a bigger body size with age.

In sum, the model predicts that it takes far more calories for children to gain weight than experts had realized.

For example, the old model estimates that for a girl who's a normal weight at age 5 to become 22 pounds overweight by the time she's 10, she'd need to eat around 40 extra calories a day—the equivalent of the calories in a small apple.

The new model predicts that she'd actually need to eat far more than that—about 400 extra calories a day, or the calories in a medium serving of fast-food french fries—to get the same result.

That's one case, but the number of calories it takes to gain weight is slightly different for boys and girls at every age.

"It's a bit of a moving target," admitted study author Kevin Hall, a senior investigator at the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

"The point of these examples is that the excess calorie consumption is much larger than most folks would have suggested in the past."

Using historical data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hall and his co-authors calculated that children today are an average of 13 pounds heavier than kids were in the late 1970s, before the start of the obesity epidemic.

To gain those extra pounds, kids have consumed about 200 more calories a day. At different ages, and depending on the amount of weight a child has gained, the differences can be even more stark.

For example, the model estimates than an 11-year-old boy who is about 18 pounds overweight has eaten roughly 320 more calories a day than his healthy-weight peers.

Meanwhile, a girl who is the same age and also 18 pounds overweight has taken in an extra 301 daily calories.

Hall said the new numbers give parents and doctors a road map for "how we got here" with overweight and obese kids, but they aren't exactly the way back to a normal weight.

Kids who cut calories by the amount their currently overeating may stop gaining, for example, but they'd likely need to cut even more to shed their extra pounds.

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center, praised the new model, and said it clarifies energy intake levels needed to achieve public health goals.

"Importantly, given the rather large calorie excesses fueling childhood obesity, this model is a rebuttal to the food industry arguments that exercise alone can be the answer," said Katz, who is also editor of the journal Childhood Obesity.

"For our kids to achieve healthy weight, control of calories in, not just calories out, will have to be part of the formula," said Katz, who was not involved in the research. But there's some good news in the new numbers, too.

As doctors and parents have long suspected, some kids appear to be able to outgrow their extra pounds when they shoot up in height during puberty, though that feat may be easier for boys than girls, because boys gain more calorie-burning muscle during puberty than girls.

"If you haven't reached puberty and haven't yet reached that growth spurt, that might be the ideal time to institute a weight management intervention to harness the power of the growth to decrease fat mass and increase fat-free mass," said study author Hall.

Childhood Obesity: After-school exercise and nutrition programs

Research has shown that children from low-income neighbourhoods are at higher risk of being obese and overweight than children from affluent neighbourhoods; in fact, one-third of low-income children enter kindergarten either overweight or obese.

In an effort to address this issue, UCLA researchers implemented and evaluated the effectiveness of a pilot after-school health-promotion program that focused on increasing students' opportunities for physical activity and healthy snacks—and boosting their knowledge about physical activity and nutrition—at four low-income, diverse elementary schools in Los Angeles County (four additional school sites were used as comparisons). The study involved students in grades 3 through 5.

After-school staff members were trained by UCLA researchers to implement the evidence-based, sequential nutrition and physical activity curriculum.

Data were collected by researchers on students' nutrition and physical activity knowledge and behavior, and their height and weight measurements, at the beginning and end of the academic year.

Results showed that the proportion of children who were obese or overweight in the intervention group decreased by 3.1 percent by the end of the school year, compared with a 2.0 percent reduction among children in the comparison group. The study found mixed results regarding diet and physical activity knowledge and behaviour.

The authors conclude that enhancing after-school physical activity opportunities through evidence-based programs can potentially benefit low-income children who are overweight or obese.

Findings from this study indicate that after-school programs have the potential to provide opportunities for enhanced physical activity and the development of healthy habits in children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families who may have limited access to nutritious foods and environments conducive to physical activity outside of school.

More information: muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_healt_care