Another study has confirmed what most parents already know innately. If you offer children a wide variety and large quantities of tasty, less-than-healthy snack foods, they will eat a lot of those foods – and get fat! There are a couple of interesting thing about this study, however. First, it focused on snack foods and… Continue reading Wide Variety, Large Quantities of Snack Foods Are Driving Childhood Obesity
For many years, there has been debate about which kinds of programs offer the highest psychosocial benefits to kids – physical fitness programs or those geared toward art, music and relaxed social interaction. With youth depression, anxiety and obesity on the rise, this debate is now both timely and time-sensitive. Now, a study from the… Continue reading Attention, Connection And FUN Offer Psychosocial Benefits to Obese Kids
How did humans get to be so much fatter than our closest primate relatives, despite sharing 99% of the same DNA? A new study suggests that part of the answer may have to do with an ancient molecular shift in how DNA is packaged inside fat cells, which curbed our body’s ability to turn ‘bad’… Continue reading How Did Humans Become the “Fat Apes?”
I’ve been around the Youth Fitness and Training arena for over 2 decades. I’ve learned a lot in that time, especially from my mistakes. That’s why it pains me to see the same mistakes being made over and over in the training of young athletes and children in general. In many ways, parents can be… Continue reading 5 Deadly Sins Parents and Coaches Commit in Training Young Athletes
A new study proposes that variation in the energy needs of brain development across kids — in terms of the timing, intensity and duration of energy use — could influence patterns of energy expenditure and weight gain. Weight gain occurs when an individual’s energy intake exceeds their energy expenditure — in other words, when calories… Continue reading Energy Use in Children’s Developing Brains Linked to Obesity Risk
For a long time, we’ve assumed a correlation between the video game habits of many kids and obesity. As a society, we’ve even assigned a visual stereotype to it. You know the one. A chubby teen lolling on the sofa for hours on end, the game controller in one hand, a bag of chips at… Continue reading Is There a Link Between Video Games and Obesity?
Signals between our gut and brain control how and when we eat food. But how the molecular mechanisms involved in this signaling are affected when we eat a high-energy diet and how they contribute to obesity are not well understood. Using a mouse model, a research team led by a biomedical scientist at the University… Continue reading Overeating? Your Overactive Receptors Might Be To Blame
Obesity is linked with an increased risk of developing anxiety and depression in children and adolescents, independent of traditional risk factors such as parental psychiatric illness and socioeconomic status, according to new research being presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Glasgow, UK (28 April-1 May). The nationwide study comparing over 12,000… Continue reading Obesity is a Risk Factor for Depression, Anxiety in Children and Adolescents
Overeating has been found to impair blood sugar (glucose) control and insulin levels. A new study suggests that the duration of a bout of overeating can affect how the body adapts glucose and insulin processing when calorie intake increases. The article is published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology — Endocrinology and… Continue reading Occasional Overeating Won’t Ruin Your Body or Your Diet, Doctor Says
Preschoolers may not be as good at resisting large portions of everyday foods as was previously thought, according to Penn State researchers. In a study, the researchers examined whether children between the ages of three and five were susceptible to the portion size effect — the tendency of people to eat more when larger portions… Continue reading Serving Preschoolers Bigger Portions Trains Them to Eat More
