Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

Does It Have to Be Surgery?

Pat Hartman January 21, 2020 1 Comment

We last addressed this subject by asking, “Who Is Ready for Bariatric Surgery?” The same post also mentioned Dr. Pretlow’s presence and presentation at the World Obesity Federation Regional Conference in Oman. Returning from that trip he wrote,

The team at the National Diabetes & Endocrine center presented four obese kids under five years of age for my recommendations. My first question was “What happens if the parents do not give food to these kids?”

“They cry!” all the parents replied in unison. These kids had their parents well-trained. The parents are being held hostage. The bariatric surgeons at the meeting said that they had performed bariatric surgery on kids as young as seven years old.

My recommendation was simple: tough love. When kids are two, or even ten, food at such ages should be totally under the control of the parents. It’s no different than refusing food to an obese pet. It may take two or three weeks or longer for the kids to stop crying, and the parents need support during this time. But eventually the kids (and the parents) will unhook from on-demand food.

In the best-case scenario, parents will choose the W8Loss2Go program as the preferred alternative to surgery.

Medically correctable

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states, as a matter of policy, that where bariatric surgery is concerned, a medically correctable cause of obesity is a contraindication. In other words, if the problem can be solved some other way, that is a strong reason not to operate.

In October of 2019 the AAP recommended lifestyle modification treatment (eating less), which has been shown to work for at least some children, if their obesity was not extreme. As Dr. Pretlow points out, the parents or adult caregivers should, after all, be in charge of the food supply.

What about older kids, with more severe obesity? The AAP says, “No studies to date demonstrate significant and durable weight loss among youth with severe obesity.” At any time, the discussion between parents or guardians, medical personnel, and patient should be all-inclusive and very thoughtful.

There is a lot to consider — BMI status, comorbidities, developmental level, physical and psychological risks, support systems, and “the ability to understand risks and benefits and adhere to lifestyle modifications.” One aspect that seems to not receive enough attention, is that patients will need to adhere to a limited diet forever, whether or not they have the surgery.

Bringing up the age difference exposes one of the weaknesses in this area of science, a certain lack of conformity among researchers. Namely,

The term “adolescent” may be defined differently in various studies and clinical settings on the basis of age or developmental stage.

The AAP, in its policy statements, uses “pediatric” to mean anyone up to age 18, with the sub-category of adolescence being 13 to 18.

A multi-author report “outlines the current evidence regarding adolescent bariatric surgery, provides recommendations for practitioners and policy makers, and serves as a companion to an accompanying technical report, ‘Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery for Pediatric Patients With Severe Obesity.’” Childhood Obesity News will be looking at the specifics of that document next.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Pediatric Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery: Evidence, Barriers, and Best Practices,” AAPPublications.org, October 2019
Image by Mark Hills/Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Race As a Factor in Child Obesity

Pat Hartman January 17, 2020 1 Comment

The thing about research on anything related to race or ethnicity, is the importance of distinguishing between the honest scholarly pursuit of knowledge and the promotion of a harmful agenda. Unfortunately, we live in a world where even the proudest educational institutions and the most highly-credentialed individuals have been shown to cheat.

Sketchy information about many subjects has been disseminated. To the earnest student, everything is worth noticing, but not everything is worth taking into consideration, because those are two different realms of consciousness. Keeping all that in mind, some things that might have been seen as danger signals in the past have been accepted, and rightly, as sad but true.

For instance, it would be easy to sneer at any study that says something like, “The research shows that obesity is a multifactorial disease.” We have learned to be suspicious, and to see the vague, blanket statement as a red flag that warns, “charlatan.” But — and this is a big but — increasingly we hear this confession from the most venerable bastions of education. Droves of very intelligent experts are saying, in effect, “We looked for something definitive, and this obesity problem is a lot bigger than we thought.”

Doubling down

“Exponential” is a word with a meaning, and it means trouble. Check out this video clip, where each square of a chessboard holds twice as many rice grains as the one before. Now imagine each grain of rice is a new factor added into a multifactorial problem.

With every different parameter and nuance a study encompasses, the requirements multiply alarmingly. To make sense of a multifactorial problem takes a lot of time and money. We can’t blame science for a lack of definitive answers, because wild cards keep showing up. Just to make things more confusing, child obesity is not universally defined. Journalist Jacqueline Howard quotes Prof. Tiago Barreira of Syracuse University:

For children […] the World Health Organization has a standard, the CDC has another standard, so obesity rates vary… [G]lobal data is a little problematic because the methods to collect data — self-reported or measured — and to analyze data differ. So some of the information that we have is not identical depending on who is reporting.

Worldwide, there are still more underfed than overfed children, but that ratio is on track to change very soon. According to best estimates, there are 10 times as many obese children and teens as there were 40 years ago.

The childhood obesity epidemic

By 2016, the situation got to where there were 41 million obese or overweight children age 5 and younger. The World Health Organization estimates that by the year 2025 there will be 70 million in that age group alone.

In the five to nine age group, the Pacific Islands are notorious for producing an obesity rate that hovers around 30%. The island of Nauru is the worst, and also holds the record for the highest rate among 10- to 19-year-olds. According to WHO, “replacing traditional foods with imported, processed food has contributed to the high prevalence of obesity and related health problems in the Pacific islands.”

In the United States, Mississippi has the most obese kids. In Europe, the Mediterranean countries are in worse shape, while the Scandinavian nations make a pretty good showing.

Why is the rate of child obesity so high in some countries and relatively lower in others? Many experts believe it’s all about how much responsibility should be assigned to different parenting methods throughout the world. Or are they that different? What can or cannot be attributed to genetic causes, including race?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why these Pacific Island nations have world’s highest childhood obesity rates,” CNN.com, 02/13/19
Image by Daniel Ramirez/Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Hair, Stress, and Obesity

Pat Hartman January 16, 2020 No Comments

Inspired by the approaching MLK holiday, the topic under examination is the effect of culture on the obesity stats of different ethnic groups. A study done in 2012 (and some things can be counted on to not change very much) indicated that the internalization of weight stigma is much more likely to afflict African-American women with depression, than it is to affect white women that way.

Also, black and Hispanic teens are more likely than white teens to have bulimia. A startlingly counter-intuitive finding was that wealthy non-white people get more cardiovascular disease than their racial counterparts who struggle with poverty. Michael Hobbes wrote for The Huffington Post,

One explanation is that navigating increasingly white spaces, and increasingly higher stakes, exerts stress on racial minorities that, over time, makes them more susceptible to heart problems.

Here is one of those stresses. For PsychCentral.com, Rick Nauert, Ph.D., reported on research performed by a team led by childhood obesity expert Susan Woolford, M.D., M.P.H. Dr. Woolford’s co-investigator (and sister), Dr. Carole Woolford-Hunt, is an expert in the relationship between race and culture, as well as a counseling psychologist.

In America’s black communities, hair plays a major role. Entire books (and movies) have been written about the psychological aspects and racist angles around Afro-textured hair and Afrocentric styles. Hair issues, raised by schools and workplaces, are generating court cases even as we speak. An elaborate hairstyle with many braids and beads can be very alienating to white people, as a look that is “too ethnic.”

On the other hand, these same critics will also complain that natural hair, just growing out of a person’s head as Nature intended, is also offensively ethnic. A lot of white people are not satisfied unless black people “do something about” their hair, mainly straighten it, because white people simply feel more comfortable around straight hair.

It is a far-reaching topic, and these scholars tackled a small corner of it — the intersection of hair and obesity — with thorough attention. What bothers these researchers is that pressure from mainstream culture seems to force black women into making a very difficult choice between their hair and their health.

In the salon

There is chemically straightened hair, which adolescent girls are said to prefer, although that might be a matter of economics, because alternatives are much more expensive, tending to fit better with the budget of an adult with a paycheck. At any rate, young women tend to shy away from gym class, school sports, sweating, and showering without adequate hair protection.

Grownups don’t have it any better. Styles that require lengthy and expensive sessions with hair professional are vulnerable to the depredations of exercise, and especially moisture. The researchers found other studies indicating that among adult black women, almost half have avoided exercise at least once, because of anxiety about hair damage. Dr. Woolford said,

Something we hadn’t seen in the literature before was whether someone’s ethnic identity impacts physical activity, coupled with the idea that a stronger association with an ethnic group may make someone more comfortable with natural hair and therefore more willing to exercise.

Even in such a small sample, it was interesting to see an association between higher levels of ethnic identity and higher levels of reported physical activity. We also found an association between hairstyle choice and level of physical activity (measured by self-reported minutes of activity that increased heart rate, such as sports participation).

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong,” HuffingtonPost.com 09/19/18
Source: “Struggle for ‘Good Hair’ May Factor Into Black Female Obesity,” PsychCentral.com, 08/08/18
Image by @eyeforebony/Unsplash

Expectations, Acceptance, and Disappointment

Pat Hartman January 15, 2020 No Comments

In present-day mainstream American culture, slimness is valued. Some groups find it more difficult to obtain, and science struggles to discover why African-Americans and people of color tend to be heavier than those with European ancestry. In 2016, SemanticScholar.org published a Walden University study that wanted to answer some of the questions. The authors wrote,

Guided by the socioecological model, this study examined the following factors: gender; acculturation; dietary intake of fat, sugar, fruits, and vegetables; and role as food purchaser/food preparer that influenced obesity.

The subjects were 165 Hispanic parents and caregivers. The very thorough paper includes sections on cultural norms, traditional gender roles, family dynamics, religious values, traditional beliefs, intrapersonal factors, interpersonal factors, and much more, including the roles of institutions, public policy, and the community.

By strange coincidence, people tend to be bulky in cultures where bulk is more comfortably accepted, and vice versa. A friend of the blog described a Southern California night club where the flamenco dancers, imported from Spain, were said to be legendary. “You could tell they were the real deal, because they were fat and old.”

A rather blunt assessment, but the rude words hide a beautiful truth. Those performers of a traditional and very high art form were not tossed on the scrap heap. Whatever age and weight had done to them, their abilities and reputations as artists were brighter than ever.

The discouraging bit

Everyone has gotten used to the idea that when obese kids are able to manage their weight the inevitable result is increased self-esteem. Except, as the old saying goes, “it ain’t necessarily so.” In 2018, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior reported on a 10-year study of more than 2,000 girls, both black and white.

The subjects were recruited at age nine or 10, so observation continued through the entire range of their teen years. Surprisingly, and disappointingly, even the young women who normalized their body weight continued to regard themselves as unacceptably heavy.

It was especially true of the white girls that “their self-esteem remained flat even as they transitioned out of obesity.” But the African-American youngsters had an advantage over their white counterparts, in their ability to bounce back and regain a certain degree of self-esteem. Researcher Sarah A. Mustillo told the press,

The self-esteem for black girls was lower overall to begin with, but for those who moved into the normal weight range, self-esteem increased more than it did for any other group of girls. We would like to look at this at more closely to understand how subcultural norms influence this process.

The whole issue is a paradox. If non-white cultures are more accepting of, and less cruel to, overweight women, isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t it great that an obese woman can still earn respect as a physicist, chef, mother, or flamenco dancer? Does anybody really want to punish girls by sending the message, “If you’re thick, you don’t deserve to have self-esteem”?

And yet, society seems to extend an ironclad promise that if a girl loses weight she will feel better about herself — which may not be valid in many or even most cases. If this proves anything, it proves that psychiatrists and psychologists need to be more involved in figuring out how to help people manage both their weight and their expectations.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Socioecological Determinants of Obesity Among Hispanic Parents/Child Caregivers in Aurora, Illinois,” SemanticScholar.org, 2016
Source: “Teen Weight Loss May Not Improve Self-Esteem,” PsychCentral.com, 08/08/18
Image by Pan American Health Org/Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Race, Culture, and Obesity

Pat Hartman January 14, 2020 1 Comment

To observe the upcoming holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Childhood Obesity News is looking back over, and catching up with, matters connected with ethnicity and race. The point here is that every kid deserves the chance to have good health. It is interesting to look back over time at how different factions in different places have attempted to deal with a whole spectrum of related issues.

In 2013, researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto discovered that kids whose parents are stressed out have slightly higher Body Mass Index ratings than kids with lower-stress parents. At first glance, this looks like a prime candidate for the maxim, “Correlation does not imply causation.” With a multifactorial problem like childhood obesity, it must be enormously difficult to tease out the truth about what causes what. On the other hand, the Children’s Health Study is said to provide both plentiful and reliable data.

Of course it should surprise no one, that parents and children are able to cause each other reciprocal stress that bounces between them like a ping-pong ball — except that rather than weakening, according to the laws of physics, the stress only increases, according to psychological weaknesses and quirks that Dr. Sigmund Freud went so far toward explaining.

Dr. Ketan Shankardass is a social epidemiologist who specializes in health in the inner city. He points out that more than half the young people in the study were Hispanic, and “the effect of stress on their BMI was greater than children of other ethnic backgrounds.” According to the press release,

Dr. Shankardass said that rather than focusing only on getting parents to change their behavior, it would be useful to focus on interventions that can support families living in challenging conditions, such as making sure they have a reliable supply of healthy food, an opportunity to live in a nice neighbourhood and other financial or service resources to help cope with stress.

In 2014, April Herndon published Fat Blame, described as being a book about…

[…] how the war on obesity is, in many ways, shaping up to be a battle against women and children, especially women and children who are marginalized via class and race… They are simply the latest victims of the war on obesity — a war declared on a “disease” but conducted […] along cultural lines.

Herndon examines the true stories of young people whose lives have been turned upside-down by interventions that were supposed to do them good, from ill-advised bariatric surgery, to removal from real parents, to placements in foster homes or worse. In many cases, the author argues, the families involved are not really helped, and are actually victims of discrimination.

Around the same time, the “food desert” issue was being examined from many angles by academics who noticed that disadvantaged people in predominantly African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods tend to have very limited access to fresh, healthful food choices. When people’s energy is sapped by the daily challenges of grinding poverty, they lack not only money, and adequate transportation for shopping, but the kitchen skills that would enable them to make better use of access to fresh produce.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Parental stress linked to obesity in children,” EurekAlert.org, 12/06/13
Source: “Fat Blame,” KansasPress.ku.edu, June 2014
Source: “Redefining the Food Desert: Combining Computer-Based GIS with Direct Observation To Measure Food Access,” ResearchGate.net, Dec 2014
Image by Michael Coghlan/Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Run-up to the MLK Day

Pat Hartman January 13, 2020 No Comments

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is coming soon (January 20), and in Tampa, Florida, they don’t half-step. Forget about a paltry day — the city celebrates with Tampa Bay Black Heritage Week which actually lasts 10 days! January 11 was “Move It to Lose It: a 5K run-walk to bring awareness to childhood obesity.” One of the perpetual debates about obesity is how much of it stems from the influence of genetics, especially big genetics, like race. For years, researchers have been piecing together clues.

A 2006 article outlined a theory espoused by, among others, Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of clinical pediatrics. He spoke of the insulinogenic environment, whose elements include the high fat content, increased fructose content, high glycemic index, and decreased fiber content of food these days. Leptin reduces appetite, and insulin blocks the effectiveness of leptin, and promotes the dopamine rush that rewards pleasure-eating. A research team found that:

[…] greater degrees of insulin resistance in African-American children might help explain why such children generally attain pubertal milestones earlier than their Caucasian counterparts…

Through extensive research on attitudes throughout the world, Rebecca Popenoe learned about what the members of some American groups do or do not get hung up about. For instance in Pennsylvania, city-dwelling Puerto Ricans equate a substantial wife with a satisfying life.

The author also discovered that African-American girls are less concerned about weight than about personal style, along with other facts to indicate that despite what the dominant white culture thinks, “contrasting female bodily ideals have a particular tenacity as markers of identity, honor, and well-being among marginalized and non-dominant ethnic groups within American society.” Popenoe also noted:

Fatness has also been shown to possess positive connotations for black American women, who associate it with strength, health, and invulnerability; for Mexican-Americans; and for Native Americans.

Where obesity is concerned, non-white Americans are under a disadvantage, part of which consists of the fact that many — although by no means all — are economically disadvantaged, and this makes difference. It’s not just that poor people make poor choices, it’s that “the stress of poverty itself” is a harmful negative factor.

Heather Tirado Gilligan wrote that the poor are…

[…] preoccupied with very different choices than wealthier people are… The immediacy of these pressures may make it more difficult to think about how eating choices today will affect health 10 or 20 years from now.

Stress from the “constant calculus of survival” is in itself a powerful factor that affects both mind and body. Another term for that force is what biologist Bruce McEwan calls the “allostatic load,” a perpetual malaise that is said to cause general systemic inflammation, the fertile breeding ground for a multitude of serious health problems.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown found that for many households, lack of access to a vehicle contributes to chronic tension. That’s where the allostatic load comes in. Just because you technically have “access” to a vehicle doesn’t mean you’re set. If you only have one child seat, you can’t go shopping on the day when an extra toddler is being babysat. If your husband needs to sleep because he worked night shift, you can’t do errands and leave the kids with him, either. Whatever their ethnic background, far too many people face challenges they really should not have to deal with.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Where to find MLK parades, Tampa Bay Black Heritage events and more,” TampaBay.com, 01/07/20
Source: “Childhood obesity caused by ‘toxic environment’ of Western diets, study says,” NaturalNews.com, 10/11/06
Source: “Obesity and the pubertal transition in girls and boys,” WebCache.GoogleUserContent.com, 2008
Source: “Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty and Sexuality Among a Saharan People,” Amazon.com, 2004
Source: “Food Deserts Aren’t the Problem,” Slate.com, 02/10/14
Source: “Five Years and $500 Million Later, USDA Admits That ‘Food Deserts’ Don’t Matter,” Reason.com, 06/13/16
Image by Helge V. Keitel/Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Apocalyptic Water Shortages and Big Soda

Pat Hartman January 10, 2020 No Comments

Many us have had the experience of “going down an Internet rabbit hole,” being sucked into a vortex that leads to exploring previously unknown territory, just like the little girl in the venerable storybook, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This particular rabbit hole connects the world’s water supply with the astonishing audacity and relentless greed of Big Soda. Some activists have dived in so far, and what they learn leads them to consequently devote all their energy to resisting the deadly influence.

This is a continuation of our previous post about water in India. Late in 2016, a court had ordered Coca-Cola and PepsiCo to stop taking water from Thamirabarani River. Still, the situation worsened. Journalist Keith Schneider wrote,

All over Tamil Nadu, in cities big and small, water supplies are so tight that municipal utilities often deliver water to homes for just a few hours a week. Tens of thousands of people wait in long lines daily to fill plastic jugs from tanks supplied by water trucks.

The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo are widely viewed in Tamil Nadu as foreign interlopers determined to reap billions of dollars by commanding scarce water that should be reserved for local farmers and citizens.

Still, both companies persisted in attempting to build even more production plants in the area. As public protests increased, activist attorney DA Prabakar told the press,

There is no right to life more precious than water. People don’t have water now. There is no water. These bottlers take precious water from a river that doesn’t have water. It has to be stopped. It will be stopped.

But early in 2017, his optimism proved to be unfounded. With the state of Tamil Nadu in the midst of the worst drought in 140 years, food prices soared and farmers committed suicide. Nearly 1.5 million retailers in the state stopped selling Coca-Cola and PepsiCo products, which the Traders Federation declared to be toxic.

A former health minister praised the boycott and told the press,

We have huge surge of non-communicable diseases due to consumption of these things.

The very next day, in an insane ruling, the high court dismissed the two public interest litigations that had been preventing the companies from taking the river’s water. In an astonishingly hypocritical statement, the Indian Beverages Association said, “We hope customers will have the right to choose.”

How is it possible to choose between sugar-sweetened commercial beverages, and water, when the supply of drinking water has been usurped by giant global corporations? Adding insult to injury, the two companies were only required to pay a ridiculously low price for the water. Of course, protests started up again, and the crisis continued to worsen.

Last summer, activist retailers (which amounted to almost all of them) once again threatened to stop selling Coke and Pepsi products. The big problem was that they would have to somehow replace their refrigerators. Bharani Vaitheesvaran reported,

Organisers of the ban say small shopkeepers are supplied with subsidised — or sometimes free — refrigerators to stock up global brands, which obliges to keep retailing the products.

In the Tamil Nadu countryside and in the major city of Chennai (population over eight million), the crisis has continued right up to the present moment. Furthermore, this is not the only part of India so drastically affected, and India is not the only country afflicted by a terrible shortage of water. The disaster is widespread and ongoing, and perpetually worsened by the actions of Big Soda.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Right to Life and Water: Drought and Turmoil for Coke and Pepsi in Tamil Nadu,” CircleOfBlue.org, 05/24/17
Source: “Coca-Cola, PepsiCo get court relief in Tamil Nadu amid retail boycott,” LiveMint.com. 03/03/17
Source: “Pepsi, Coke can use water from Tamil Nadu river: Madras HC,” Rediff.com, 03/02/17
Source: “Coca-Cola, Pepsi face Tamil Nadu trader activism again,” IndiaTimes.com, 05/16/19
Image by KillerCoke.org

Bloat ‘Em Up, Suck ‘Em Dry

Pat Hartman January 9, 2020 2 Comments

The contrast between water and soda pop should be obvious. Water is necessary for human life, and does not cause weight gain or any other adverse health effects. On the other hand, nobody needs sugar-sweetened beverages, which have multiple deleterious effects on health and life.

But the soda industry is not content to offer soda as an alternate choice to water. The industry is not satisfied merely to seize the huge advantage provided by the brainwashing tool known as advertising. Some people have pointed out the other aspect of this rivalry, which is that the soda industry seems intent on not even allowing choice to be available. To these critics, it appears obvious that in many parts of the world, Big Soda makes active efforts to remove water from the equation, so people literally have no choice other than to buy the products, if they want to drink anything at all.

Just another conspiracy theory?

A previous Childhood Obesity News post mentioned Ryan Alexander Diduck, who accuses Coke of irreparably tainting the music industry. He also broaches the world-encompassing threat of water insecurity which is, he believes, the most urgent concern the human race faces at this time.

Big Soda is part of the cabal that seems intent on ending life on earth, which is why…

Any and all industries that turn water into an unhealthy product and trademark it for human consumption and corporate profit must be held accountable.

People in India can probably name at least one American state, but how many Indian states could the average American identify? How about Tamil Nadu, which is at the southern tip of the subcontinent, right across the water from Sri Lanka? In one farming locale, crops are watered from the Thamirabharani river.

Since 2005, Pepsi and Coca-Cola were allowed to take a certain amount of the river’s water. Apparently, nobody was monitoring how much the companies actually took. Especially in the dry season, the siphoning off of so much vital water is really harmful, not only to humans, but to deer in a nearby animal sanctuary.

Activists decided that enough was enough, and instituted a PIL, or public interest litigation, comparable to a class action suit in America, seeking a ban. Things got rough. At the SIPCOT Industrial Growth Centre, during a demonstration organized by farmer unions and political groups, police violently attacked the protesters.

The Madras High Court ordered a stay, which only temporarily stopped Big Soda from draining the river. Journalists Pheba Mathew and Ramanathan S. published a quotation from activist Nityanand Jayaraman:

Extracting scarce water for luxury and profit goes against residents and farmers, especially at a time when there is scarcity of water for drinking and irrigation. If there is surplus, it is a different matter but in case of scarcity I don’t think it is a good thing.

(Stay tuned…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “From Coke & Pepsi To Red Bull, How Fizzy Drinks Swallowed Music,” TheQuietus.com, 10/31/19
Source: “No Thamirabarani river water for Pepsi and Coke says HC, but the battle isn’t over,” TheNewsMinute.com, 11/22/16
Image by KillerCoke.org

The Voracious Thirst of Beverage Corporations

Pat Hartman January 8, 2020 No Comments

Let’s say just a few more words about soft drinks — a few words having to do with a very large study of 451,743 people of both sexes, from 10 European countries. JAMA Internal Medicine published a report saying,

Regular consumption of soft drinks — both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened — was associated with a greater risk of all causes of death… Participants who drank two or more glasses of soft drinks per day had a higher risk of mortality than those who consumed less than one glass per month.

In other words, this swill not only makes people fat, it makes them deceased. Sugar-sweetened soft drinks, when one or more glasses per day are consumed, are associated with deaths from diseases of the liver, appendix, intestines, and pancreas. The artificially-sweetened stuff, when two or more glasses per day are consumed, is associated with mortality from diseases of the circulatory system.

That report followed close on the heels of a study from the University of Cambridge, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Milan’s University of Bocconi, and U.S. Right to Know. Together, these institutions showed how the Coca-Cola Company has “systematically violated all of the principles contained in its own Declaration of Transparency.”

The findings, according to slowfood.com, have to do with…

[…] contractual agreements that authorize the company to suppress or manipulate the results of research funded, even partially, by certain public institutions in the United States and Canada… Imagine a corporate giant in the world food industry that has the freedom to preview, interrupt, set conditions for, or manipulate scientific research about its products…

Numerous metaphors are available — it’s like letting the fox guard the henhouse; it’s like letting a corrupt police department investigate itself; it is in fact exactly like Coke entering into contracts with scientific researchers that “give the company the power to manipulate or withhold health research about its products.”

The essential element

Childhood Obesity News has mentioned the importance of water in maintaining general health and keeping weight down. Of course, every so often another source confirms how vital water is.

For instance, less than a year ago, research done by Pennsylvania State University’s Water, Health and Nutrition Laboratory compiled information on nearly 8,400 children in an age range of two years to 19 years. The researchers found that very many American kids don’t drink water at all — but (surprise!) they do drink sugar-sweetened beverages.

This was not the first survey to conclude that over time, the extra calories from sugary drinks increase the risk of childhood obesity. Study author Asher Rosinger reiterated that water is the healthiest beverage for anyone to drink, adding,

Kids should drink water every day, and it should be the first option [parents] go to when their kids are thirsty.

Here is the horror story: No matter how sincerely they may believe that water is better in every way, there are now places on earth where people find that sweetened beverages are easier to get, and cheaper, than drinking water.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “It doesn’t matter if it’s sugary or diet: New study links all soda to an early death,” WashingtonPost.com, 09/04/19
Source: “Coca-Cola “Opens Happiness” But Shuts The Mouths Of Researchers,” SlowFood.com, 06/11/19
Source: “Drinking Less Water Is Linked To Obesity In Kids: Study,” Daddyhood.net, 04/24/19
Image source: princesse.charli, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Fizzy Drinks and Human Rights Abuse

Pat Hartman January 7, 2020 No Comments

The illustration on this page represents an effort by the Coca-Cola Company to convince the public that its product is as vital to existence as the human body’s own heart and circulatory system. This is the kind of clever iconography that helps Coke and the beverage industry maintain their stranglehold on the world’s subconscious mind.

In a recently referenced article about the spread of child obesity in the Caribbean, author Daphne Ewing-Chow voiced the opinion that…

Allowing children to consume sugary drinks on a regular basis is a violation of Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that provides for “the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health.”

Many people share this idea that childhood obesity is a social justice issue, and as such, should be addressed by policy makers, the education system, and parents. But how? What can be done to break the hold that the soda industry has on its young market?

On the individual level

When we talk about sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), that also includes beverages artificially sweetened with chemicals or boosted with “flavor enhancers,” which are just as harmful for their own reasons. How can kids who drink far too many sugar-sweetened beverages be helped?

We talked before about how continual drinking can be seen as a form of grazing, a behavioral glitch that impels a person to constantly supply the mouth with something to amuse it. In “Addiction Model Intervention for Obesity in Young People,” Dr. Pretlow and co-author Carol M. Stock wrote,

Grazing is eating or drinking continually. Keeping candy in your pocket or desk, always sipping a soda, frequent trips to the “goodies” table at work or school, and frequent getting snacks from the vending machine are examples of grazing.

Some experts believe that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated, and while that statistic is debatable, there is no doubt that…

[…] dehydration can adversely affect vigilance, concentration, reaction time, learning, memory, mood and reasoning and can cause headaches, fatigue and anxiety.

Probably nobody has ever been harmed by carrying around a container of water all day and drinking from it frequently. The same is not true of carrying around a container of soda pop, which has every appearance of being an addictive behavior, and definitely causes harm.

Here is a quotation from another publication by the same authors, concerning an early study of problem foods for Weigh2Rock:

Most prevalent problem foods were: soda (59%), chips (57%), ice cream (38%), pizza, (35%), and candy (24%).

Successful withdrawal was accomplished by 89% of participants, involving 1-12 problem foods (minimum 10 days of withdrawal required). Certain foods were more difficult: soda (mean 22.5 days), chips (18.5 days), ice cream (15 days), and pizza (11 days).

When that information registers, it is something of a shock. In terms of addictive potential, SSBs are right up there with chips! The good news is that like the overconsumption of food, overconsumption of SSBs responds to addiction treatment methods. This is why we recommend W8Loss2Go, the smartphone app that facilitates withdrawal from problem foods by staged increments.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Sugary Beverages Are Feeding A Childhood Obesity Epidemic In the Caribbean,” Forbes.com, 12/23/19
Source: “Addiction Model Intervention for Obesity in Young People,” Weigh2Rock.com, 2014
Source: “Compulsive Eating / Food Addiction Intervention for Obesity Implemented as a Smartphone App: a Pilot Study,” Weigh2Rock.com, 2013
Image sources: Shaun Preece/Creative Commons

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