The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and its Foundation launched their first joint initiative, Kids Eat Right, in November, 2010. This campaign is dedicated to supporting the efforts of the White House to end the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation. It is based on the premise that kids need a quality diet of the right foods to optimize their growth and development and to maintain a healthy weight. Kids Eat Right is a two-tiered campaign aimed at mobilizing Academy members to participate in community and school childhood obesity prevention efforts, and also at educating families, communities, and policymakers about the importance of quality nutrition. One of the resources offered through Kids Eat Right to registered dietitian nutritionists and other health care professionals is a series of webinars and slide presentations aimed at helping families make informed and healthy food choices, including: Point A to Point B: Improving Access to Healthy Foods in Food Banks; School Meals and Community Partnerships: Creative Solutions against Food Insecurity; Contributors and Effects of Food Insecurity: Nutrition and Beyond; Hungry and Overweight: How is it Possible?; and Motivating Consumers with Messages That Make Sense To Them. These webinars and accompanying slide presentations are available free online at: www.eatright.org/foundation/kidseatright.
Childhood Obesity
Editor-in-Chief David L. Katz, MD, MPH, made the case in
US News and World Report
to eradicate food made just for kids. In the article, he lays out the facts of the food environment in nature: Across all species—other than humans—there is no such thing as kids' food. “Childhood is a time to learn the skill set necessary to survive as an adult, with a very strong emphasis on food choice and acquisition. Every species teaches its kids how to eat,” Dr. Katz says. “Every species but ours.” He goes on to explain how our culture has invented an entire industry devoted to feeding kids differently and why this is detrimental to society. For a link to the full article and a related petition, visit: https://www.change.org/petitions/big-food-eliminate-kid-food-2
Rachel T. Kimbro, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Advisor in the Department of Sociology at Rice University in Houston. She is also the director of Rice's Kinder Institute Urban Health Program. Her research focuses on racial and ethnic health disparities and family influences on health behaviors and outcomes, including family and neighborhood influences on child obesity, food insecurity and physical activity. She co-authored a study titled “Family structure and obesity among US children.” (Augustine JF, Kimbro RT. Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk 2013;4:1). The study looked at more than 10,000 children across the United States and found that children living in a traditional two-parent married household were less likely to be obese than children living with cohabitating parents, an adult relative, a single mother, or a cohabitating stepparent family.
Steven Mittelman, MD, PhD, has been named Director of the new Diabetes and Obesity Program at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles. This institute's focus will be to build laboratory-based translational and clinical research, expanding core infrastructure, and increasing the interaction between scientists and clinicians working on diabetes and obesity-related projects. Clinical work will include establishing a multidisciplinary obesity clinic, an expansion of the Kids N Fitness lifestyle intervention program, and potentially developing a bariatric surgery program. Dr. Mittelman's own research focuses on the relationship between obesity and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and Director for the George Donnell Society for Pediatric Scientists.
Mary Story, PhD, RD, is Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs and Professor of the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. In addition, Dr. Story is an adjunct professor in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Story was recently invited by the Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA to serve on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which will create the eighth edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Her research focuses on school and community-based environmental intervention and obesity studies for children, adolescents and families. Dr. Story is also Director of the National Program Office for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Healthy Eating Research Program and she serves on the editorial board of Childhood Obesity.
Sharonda Alston-Taylor, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Her clinical focus is on obesity and menstrual problems, and her research focuses on using waist circumference to screen for medical problems related to visceral adiposity. Dr. Taylor is the lead author of a recent article published in the journal Pediatrics titled “A qualitative study of the day-to-day lives of obese Mexican-American adolescent females.” (Taylor SA, Garland BH, Sanchez-Fournier BE, et al. 2013;131(6):1132–1138). The study focused on 20 morbidly obese adolescents and their families. They were interviewed regarding food choices, personal and family barriers to weight loss, support sources, previous experience with weight loss, and weight-related beliefs.
Naim Alkhouri, MD, is the Director of the Pediatric Preventive Cardiology and Metabolic Clinic in the Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Alkhouri recently presented findings at the 2013 Digestive Disease Week meeting held in Orlando, Florida that childhood obesity and pediatric nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) may be associated with changes in gut flora and impaired metabolism. At its core, Dr. Alkhouri's research found that breath concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in obese children were different than those in the nonobese control group. His research used mass spectrometry to analyze exhalation from 60 overweight or obese children and from 55 normal weight children. The study found that the concentrations of more than 50 VOCs were significantly different between the two groups.
Gina Ambrosini, PhD, is a Research Fellow at the MRC Human Nutrition Research Elsie Widdowson Laboratory in Cambridge, UK. Her research focuses on dietary patterns in epidemiological studies, particularly on the use of reduced rank regression statistics. Dr. Ambrosini's work involves analyzing dietary intake and obesity-related health outcomes in children and adolescents. She is the lead author of a recent article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition titled “Prospective associations between sugar-sweetened beverage intakes and cardiometabolic risk factors in adolescents.” (Ambrosini GL, Oddy WH, Huang RC, et al. May 2013; E-pub ahead of print). The study looked at 1433 adolescent offspring from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study between the ages of 14 and 17. Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was estimated via a food questionnaire; BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, serum lipids, glucose, and insulin levels were measured, as well as overall cardiometabolic risk. The study concluded that sugar-sweetened beverage intake can be a significant predictor of cardiometabolic risk in young people, independent of weight status.
Robert H. Lustig, MD, is a Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at University of California, San Francisco, and Director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF. Dr. Lustig is a member of the Pediatric Obesity Practice Guidelines Subcommittee of The Endocrine Society, as well as a member of the Obesity Task Force. He is the author of the bestselling book, “Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease.” Dr. Lustig gave a guest lecture talk in June before the Bermuda Diabetes Association and the Argus Group on, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,”—his talk on the same topic is available on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM. The underlying theme of his talk and his overall message in his books and public engagements is that food manufacturers utilize so much sugar, especially high fructose corn syrup, in drinks and processed foods, that it is the primary cause of obesity in children and adults, as well as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Jamie F. Chriqui, PhD, MHS, is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for Health Research and Policy. Her research focuses on health policy research, evaluation, and analysis, with an emphasis on obesity, substance abuse, tobacco control, and other chronic disease-related policy issues. Dr. Chriqui serves on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention and the IOM's Committee on Evaluating Progress of Obesity Prevention Efforts. She is the author or co-author of several recent articles, including: “State and district policy influences on district-wide elementary and middle school physical education practices.” (Chriqui JF, Eyler A, Carnoske C, et al. J Public Health Manag Pract 2013;19(3 Suppl 1):S41–S48) and “Roles and strategies of state organizations related to school-based physical education and physical activity policies.” (Cradock AL, Barrett JL, Carnoske C, et al. J Public Health Manag Pract 2013;19(3 Suppl 1):S34–S40).
Jan Blustein, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Health Policy and Medicine at New York University Wagner. She co-directs NYU Wagner's NIH-funded TL1 PhD program in Clinical and Translational Research, and focuses on researching the relationship between environmental exposure and childhood obesity. Dr. Blustein is the lead author of an article published in the International Journal of Obesity titled, “Association of caesarean delivery with child adiposity from age 6 weeks to 15 years.” (Blustein J, Attina T, Liu M, et al. 2013;37(7):900–906. The study was a longitudinal birth cohort study that followed 10,219 children born in Avon, UK between 1991 and 1992. The investigation concluded that Caesarean birth is linked to increased body mass in childhood and adolescence.
