Children's Sugar Consumption Too High

U.S. children and teens are getting too much sugar in their diets, mostly from processed and prepared foods, according to a new study.

Sugar consumption decreased since 1999, although added sugars make up 16 percent of youth diets and contribute to the ongoing problem of childhood obesity.

Researchers followed 7,100 children and teens between 1999 and 2008 and found the majority of them had unhealthy eating habits.

Boys consumed 362 calories and girls consumed 282 calories from added sugar daily, a number that increased as the children got older. Forty-one percent of calories from additional sugar came from soda and other beverages, according to the study.

"If you look at individual items, the one that has the biggest contribution [to added sugar consumption] is soda," Cynthia Ogden, lead study researcher and epidemiologist of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that between 5 and 15 percent of daily calories come from sugars and fats combined.

The National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief published the study on Wednesday.

Lessening the number of calories children consume is imperative to curb childhood obesity. Over 12.5 million children ages 2-19 are obese, according to the CDC. The number has tripled since 1980.

In addition, childhood obesity-related healthcare costs $3 billion annually, according to a 2009 study published in Nature.

Parents need to watch what they buy and cook more at home to curb the calories their children eat, one dietician said.

"Whoever is the gatekeeper for the family food supply needs to take a good, hard look at their choices. Obviously, junk foods, cookies, desserts and sodas are high in sugar and non-nutritive calories," Samantha Heller, a dietitian and nutritionist based in Connecticut, reported.

However, many unexpected foods are high in sugars. Parents need to check ingredient lists for hidden sugars such as brown rice syrup, dextrose, fructose, molasses, sucrose, corn sweetener, barley malt syrup, fruit juice concentrates, glucose, cane juice syrup and sorghum, reported.

UK Government sponsors fast food marketing in schools via teachers

Almost two thirds of UK primary schools will receive free teaching aids from Media Smart by the end of 2011. The non-profit media literacy programme provides reading and writing material that focuses on advertising.

Media Smart says that its teaching packs, which it says are created by educational experts and cover topics such as language, images, and production across commercial media, “teach children to think critically about advertising in the context of their daily lives”.

But parents might view the lessons that their children are learning differently if they knew that the programme was funded by some of the world’s most powerful toy and fast food companies.

The supporters are the Advertising Association, the British Toy and Hobby Association, Business in the Community, DDB London, Ferrero, Five, GMTV, Hasbro, the Internet Advertising Bureau, the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, ITV, Jetix, Lego, Mars, Mattel, McDonald’s, MediaCom, Mindshare, Turner, and Viacom.

The teaching packs for 6 to 11 year olds have included advertisements for food products and fast food retailers. Media Smart says that teachers might use the materials in various ways, such as projects for the end of term or by picking activities to suit lesson plans.

When Media Smart was launched in 2002 the Financial Times said that the initiative showed “the seriousness with which the industry is now viewing a potential ban on marketing to children”.

What agenda does it have?
The Children’s Food Campaign of Sustain, an umbrella organisation for groups campaigning for better food and farming, has called Media Smart’s approach “particularly reprehensible,” because its lesson plans repeatedly involve viewing advertisements for junk food.

The campaign says, “Teachers are instructed to show adverts for Burger King, Frosties, Pepsi, McDonalds, Walkers Crisps and the sugary cereal Hunny Bs.” The programme is funded by McDonald’s, Kelloggs, Mars, Ferrero, and other food manufacturers.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, warned: “While there is nothing wrong with companies genuinely seeking to use their resources to support schools on a philanthropic basis, it seems that manufacturers of fast foods can’t help but introduce their support accompanied by subliminal, and not so subliminal, advertising. Teachers should look with caution at what is on offer.”

The Children’s Food Campaign says that changes in advertising regulations since 2007 mean that it would not be possible to broadcast an advertisement for Hunny Bs now, as the use of licensed characters to market food to children is now restricted. Showing it to children in a classroom, however, remains legal.

Media Smart counters critics by saying that it uses hundreds of real life examples of advertising in its materials. It defends its past use of the Hunny Bs advertisement, saying that the materials were written before the new advertising rules were proposed in September 2007 (Charlotte Higgo, Media Smart, personal communication, 5 October 2010).

Where does it get its money from?
Although Media Smart acknowledges that it is supported by the UK advertising business, its website does not make entirely explicit its link to an advertising industry lobby group called the World Federation of Advertisers, which champions and defends the interests of advertising companies.

The federation represents around 90% of global marketing communications worth almost $700bn (£430bn; €490bn) a year. It has lobbied against proposals by the European Union and the World Health Organization for tighter restrictions on marketing of food to children (http://bit.ly/pAySN7; http://bit.ly/nAv7pu).

Media Smart’s chairman is Paul Jackson, also regional vice president of the World Federation of Advertisers (http://bit.ly/qr6Fjb). The federation says that it “wholeheartedly supports” Media Smart but does not “fund Media Smart and has no formal links to the programme” (Will Gilroy, World Federation of Advertisers, personal communication, 13 December 2010).

Reference Notes
Cite this as: BMJ 2011;343:d5415
http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5415.full?ijkey=zxXVcIkeHmgHXD6&keytype=ref

Footnotes
• bmj.com Feature: Will industry influence derail UN summit? (BMJ 2011;343:d5328, doi:10.1136/bmj.d5328)

*Richard Cookson is a freelance journalist. SpinWatch works with the British Medical Journal to produce occasional Lobby Watch health lobbying-related columns.

Child obesity growing in developing world: WHO

The number of overweight African children under five has tripled to 13.5 million in 20 years, the UN's health agency said Wednesday, warning of a child obesity problem in developing countries.

Poor diet, low rates of breastfeeding and a sedentary lifestyle were largely to blame for the sharp rise in overweight children in developing nations, the World Health Organisation said.

In Africa the jump was from four million in 1990 to 13.5 million in 2010, an increase from four percent of the total under-five population to 8.5 percent, it said.

In Asia the corresponding gain over the same period was from 3.2 percent to 4.9 percent.

"The reason why children become overweight is because they are becoming more sedentary or less active and the food they have is exceeding their needs," said Francesco Branca, WHO's director of nutrition for health and development.

Children are given high energy food that is low in essential vitamins and minerals but heavy with sugar and fat, he noted.

"What we have seen in developing countries is that the offer of food is moving towards highly refined, industrial food which often have very high content of sugar and fat," Branca said.

The problem was compounded by a trend of lower breastfeeding rates, he said.

Poor nutrition among mothers also often resulted in newborns with a low birth weight of under 2.5 kilogrammes (5.51 pounds) who were vulnerable to becoming overweight later in life, Branca said.

"Often we have the combination of children who have low birth weight who become more easily children who are overweight," he said, adding "children with very low birth weight are less able to handle high energy density food."

The UN health agency issued in January a series of recommendations aimed at cutting child obesity, including a call on governments to ban junk food from schools and playgrounds.

Lifestyle intervention reduces preschoolers’ body fat and improves fitness

Lifestyle intervention reduces preschoolers’ body fat, improves fitness — Science Blog

Migrant children are at increased risk of obesity, but a new study shows that a program teaching multiple lifestyle changes to predominantly migrant preschoolers and their parents helps the children reduce body fat and improve fitness.

Such interventions may be needed to help curb the global obesity epidemic, the study’s lead author Jardena Puder, MD, said. Puder, a senior resident at the University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, said, “Even young children have high rates of obesity today.”

Statistics show that in the United States, about 14 percent of children ages 2 to 5 years are obese.

The public health program in this study attempted to reduce the risk of obesity among preschool children from areas of Switzerland with high migrant populations.

Specifically, it encouraged the children to increase their physical activity, improve nutrition, get more sleep and reduce audiovisual media use and stimulation, especially TV watching and video games.

Excessive exposure to stimulating media use can contribute to lack of physical activity, and insufficient sleep in early life may play a role in childhood obesity, according to the authors.

Compared with the control group, the group of children who participated in the program had significantly improved overall and aerobic fitness, according to the abstract.

Additionally, the intervention group had greater reductions in total and percent of body fat, waist size and appropriate or moderate media use. They also improved more than the controls in “some aspects of nutritional behaviour,” Puder said.