Sport Is Unrelated To Obesity In Children 594
xiox writes "The UK government is planning to stop funding a study to understand obesity in children. The study fits children with accelerometers to measure how much energy each child uses in a day by moving. The results are surprising. Those children who do sports at school do not burn more calories than those who don't. Furthermore there is no correlation between body mass index and the number of calories used! The results are very interesting, suggesting that genetics and diet are the main reasons for childhood obesity, not sport. The UK government is trying to increase the amount of sport in schools."
This may all be true, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This may all be true, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no argument with the studies but I thought throwing a few more facts in the soup might be interesting.
Normally animals and for that matter people given unlimited diets will only have a few individuals get fat. As a general rule diet and for that matter exercise just have little or no effect. We do know several things that to cause weight gain. It is known for example that deliberate malnutrition will cause weight gain. (anybody heard of a feed lot? Thats what it does. ) Genetic engineering of late has been producing the same effect as the feed lot diet.There are a lot of other factors like loss of sleep. Maybe our society and lifestyle really are a disease. We tend to get an arrogant disregard for sleep in our society and we also get a disregard of the quality of our food having food sellers pushing foods that are grown in conditions that don't exactly produce the best balanced nutrition.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've tried "deliberate malnutrition" aka "a diet" and managed to lose 30 pounds.
Maybe you meant nutritional deficiencies will cause weight gain?
Maybe you meant to say weight loss?
What does fattening up animals on a high energy diet (the feedlot di
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To clarify the content of various foods contains a ratio of various items. I don't want to go into exactly which ones -- too much to say if I did. The ratio determines the nutritional value of the foods similar to the air/fuel ratio in a gasoline engine but more complex. If you stuff in all kinds of one item such as protein or fat or carbohydrate and don't match them with the proper vitamins and minerals the situation gets out of hand. Your body will demand more stuff to fill in the ratio. Or it will s
Re:This may all be true, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Peckishness. I just want to chew something. Having a box of sugar-free gum handy really helps with this.
2) Vitamin deficiency. When I first encountered this, I wandered into the kitchen looking for cheese. Man, I just wanted cheese. I felt like a pregnant woman, seriously. I had been cutting out milk, and was probably calcium-deficient. Also, when you eat less, you just get less vitamins. I take a multivitamin with calcium to counteract this kind of hunger, and that works really well.
3) Energy hunger. When it's bad, my head spins and I get really cranky. The weird thing is, this kind of hunger has nothing to do with how many calories you need: it's about rhythms (how long since you ate) and whether your stomach feels empty.
For #3, I look for foods with very low energy density. Happily, many of them tend to be fruits and vegetables, which helps with #2. For example, you can have a huge salad at only 200 kcal with the right dressing, and there are a lot of fantastic vinaigrettes out there. (Kraft's Sun Dried Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Italian come to mind.) Sprinkle some real crumbled bacon and shredded cheese on it for extra taste. Make it easy on yourself: buy everything pre-packaged.
I watch what I drink, mostly just avoiding milk and soda pop. Water is great. Crystal Light (or a knock-off) and Diet Coke are wonderful when you need something sweet. I guzzle something before eating to feel more full with less.
You can do it no matter how cranky you tend to get, if you know some tricks.
I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
Weight lifting forced my body to add muscle mass which boosted how many calories I burned during a day. The big problem I have now is that I'm getting older and, frankly, lifting and I don't get along as well as we used to...
Re:This may all be true, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not correct for the subject in hand. The subject is UK schools .
This morning I dropped of junior at school and I noticed a big sign: No play in the playground allowed, dangerous BIG holes in the playground. There were two holes, both 1-2 inch wide, 1 inch deep. For the reference the school is Queens Edith Primary in Cambridge UK.
The way UK schools (based on observations from the same school) understand physical education is - you put kids in class, tell one to do an exercise, the rest watch. There is a variation on this when you show the exercise and they do it. There is no warmup whatsoever. If a child decides to warm up by doing a run around for 5 minutes he is penalized and chastized as a troublemaker. Compared to that on the continent they make them all run for at least 200m in the under 10 age group, going to 600+ for the older ones at the beginning of the lesson. As a result the exercise value in the UK is minimal and it is actually hazardous from a health and safety perspective as the children have had no warmup.
In addition to that in the UK all other obesity related factors are obscured by one other - vitamin D defficiency past the nursery age. 95% of the kids show bone deformations characteristic for that - X legs, rachitic skull, the lot. The primary reason for this is the anti-sun + suncream obscession which leads to most kids getting less than the essential doze of sun for activating vitamin D to the required degree (30min daily average unhindered summer sun at UK lattittude for an average white caucasian, going up to 1h+ in spring, autumn and winter, with the numbers for darker skin colour being bigger than that). Add to that the fact that kids are ferried around in buggies restrained with minimal movement till the age of 4 and the picture is mostly complete (mine refused to get into it from the age of 2 and I agreed with him).
From there on kids are bound to be obese. Until these factors are eliminated any study in the UK will be bogus as a large sample of the juvenile population is already highly susceptible to obesity and no physical education or sport can help them in that. Nothing to see people, move along. Another study which concentrates on everything but the two root causes for UK:
- The rabid propaganda by the UK cancer research soscieties about skin cancer will kill by an order of magnitude more people from vitamin D defficiency related causes like bone problems and obesityt, than it will save.
- The UK pram obscession is the other main reason for obesity. Get the kids out, they are not a damn toy doll to ferry around.
Stating either of these is too unpopular so people do studies on everything but these.It's the law of grammar posts. (Score:5, Funny)
Er (Score:3)
Well, you just covered all the possibilities in a single sentence, and effectively said nothing.
I'd like to see accellerometers fitted to adults in the same way as with children. Then we can make a real comparison.
Maybe sports in school takes fun out of exercise (Score:5, Interesting)
If the emphasis is on competition and winning, the vast majority of school children don't belong to the few that are advanced a few months in maturation and have the muscle strength to dominate in these competitions and thereby most warm the bench. At all levels from the gym class through the "revenue sports" of high school football (yes, they charge money to watch these kids play football), the emphasis is on winning rather than having a rotation to keep as many kids involved, or even providing any degree of remedial sports training to offer any degree of encouragement or extra support for the kids who don't dominate their sports teams.
There may be some cultural or social reasons for the less athletically gifted to try out for sports teams and be part of the team even if they play a minor supporting role, but the whole sports culture is a kind of primate dominance hierarchy thing rather than focused on keeping as many people physically fit.
Also, I don't know if the Latin teacher is a frustrated Classics scholar, the English teacher is a frustrated attorney, or if the Math teacher is a frustrated research engineer (although the Physics teacher, if you had that subject, was always a little beyond the fringe), but the Gym teacher is most likely a frustrated athlete given the very broad pyramid of people attempting to make a career out of sports with a chosen few at the very tippy top.
Re:Maybe sports in school takes fun out of exercis (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On rainy days when everyone (several classes worth of students) had to p
Re:Maybe sports in school takes fun out of exercis (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps by having non-conventional or out-of-season sports run concurrently with the vanilla sports. The better athletes seem to prefer the regular events, while the less skilled could simply choose something else if frustrated, always with the excuse, "well I like dodgeball, pickleball, badminton, or curling more than basketball, baseball, football, or boring football (a.k.a soccer)."
Any sports not practiced at home will even the playing field as well, so there's no reason to restrict anyone to any strata.
Anyone who says dodgeball is stupid better not play FPSs.
I don't know what school you went to (Score:3, Insightful)
It's ridiculous. Trophies for everybody! And it's not like the kids don't realize that the trophies are worthless, either.
They do the same thing in business-based athletics; I went to a martial arts competition where they subdivided the children into so many categories that everyone was guaranteed to finish in the "to
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nerds are so... dumb. (Score:3, Informative)
Jocks don't hate you because you suck at sports. Jocks hate you because you're smarter than them.
That's why you're never going to get jocks to like you by getting better at sports. Even if you succeed, then you'll just be someone who is smarter than them AND is good at sports, and they'll just hate you more.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, come off your high horse. You anti-stereotypers are all the same.
Re:Maybe sports in school takes fun out of exercis (Score:4, Funny)
Bzzzt.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Except the article mentioned that increasing the frequency of opportunity at school for activity had no significant effect on the total activity level of the child. What you'd probably need to do is look at the ones who were more active in school, and encourage their family to get more active outside the classroom — which is much harder to do at a social engineering level.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For a dumpy, awkward kid like myself, a school fitness program is an excellent way to guaran
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who works in a gait lab (in the other half of my life) and presents at the Gait and Clinical Motion Analysis Society Conference [amrms.com], I am highly skeptical of any claims that accelerometer data can be correlated with energy expenditure. As an example of a small study that showed no correlation between the two, see here [obesityresearch.org]. Essentially, there are too many other variables involved in energy expenditure, the most prominent of which is lean body mass. Accelerometers are blunt instruments compared to the
Incomplete Story (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a bit misleading and I hope it doesn't discourage the efforts to get kids to excercise more.
Re:Incomplete Story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
People can still be fat and "in shape", or thin - it just matters if your heart is used to exercising.
The New England Journal of Medicine looked at obese and thin people about 7 years ago and compared their eating/exercise habits. The overweight people typically underestimated the amount of food they ate by 1/2 and overestimated the amount of exercise they did by two times.
Weight is basically a function of how many calories you consume. Two people can eat the sa
After TFA, read this too (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:After TFA, read this too (Score:5, Insightful)
Horseshit. When I was in school 20 or so years ago, you could count the number of fat kids (in a school of 2300 students) on your fingers, and a child who would be considered obese by today's standards was virtually unheard of. At my kids' schools, it's easier to count the kids who aren't fat than the ones who are, and there's at least one obese kid in any group larger than about ten.
I know it's all the rage to pretend that whatever problems our society causes itself don't actually exist, but this one is pretty easy to nail down. Anybody who says we don't have a serious problem with kids and their poor eating habits and lack of activity is either an idiot or a liar.
Re:After TFA, read this too (Score:5, Informative)
Watching my 10 year old niece grow up, I can say with some certainty, that obesity is at least in part, a learned behavior. She has been fed a steady diet of fast food and sweets, and is essentially instructed to "sit in front of the TV while Mommy does something else". Watching her morbidly obese mother sneak food and gorge herself to find solace has only reinforced negative eating habits. My wife and I took her skiing last weekend and she lied to me about her weight. 10 years old and she is ashamed of how heavy she is. She was almost in tears when my wife and I explained to her that for her own safety, she had to tell us what she weighed so her ski bindings could be set properly.
breaks my heart.....
Re:After TFA, read this too (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not that afraid of bromine or vegetables. But a can of the stuff is 170 Calories. That's about 1/12th of what most people need in a day to not gain weight. 2 cans of the stuff, and an adult is well on its way to gaining a couple ounces that day.
But mostly I blame fruit juice for kid obesity. It's just as fattening as soda, which is hugely fattening, but somebody convinced parents it's good for you. 160 Calories per cup of a liquid (that barely satisfies any kind of hunger in most people) is not at all good for you. I was a fatty-fat as a kid, and my parents took me off soda and put me on juice. Not a lot of results from that one. I know a girl that is worried about her kid's weight but feeds him 100 Calorie juice boxes at every meal because it's healthy and won't grasp that the Vitamin C won't help him when he dies of a heart attack at 38. Switch that with water, your kid will lose a pound every 12 days. Absolutely guaranteed. Drop 1 juice box a day, and he'll lose a pound a month. Or at least gain a pound less. That stuff is evil.
Not that I think it should be illegal to sell the stuff or anything, but if the government spent a few of those research bucks on running commercials with graphs of how (Calorie input - Calorie output) / 3500 ALWAYS* equals weight change (get the guy from the Oxy-Clean commercials to yell the "ALWAYS" part), we'd be a lot better off. Of course, it would put all the many profitable, tax-paying voodoo diets out of business. Not that I think there's a conspiracy, I don't, but a lot of people would get mad if we were all skinny.
* Plus or minus a tiny, tiny bit that evens out to 0 over the long term and discounting (the very small) changes in metabolism resulting from lowered food intake. Metabolic conditions also (possibly) excepted. This part doesn't need to go in the commercial. This is just hear to discourage nitpicking on the obvious stuff.
I'm skeptical... (Score:5, Insightful)
Body fat isn't magic. It comes from food you eat. If you are exercising more and still have more weight, it means you are eating too much. People need to stop looking for excuses.
And yes, BMI sucks.
Re: (Score:2)
Genetics works over time. I don't see a miracle happening where we are breeding at the rate of bacteria to go thru hundreds of generations to breed 'fat' people.
My parents weren't fat. My grandparents weren't fat- at least in the old bw photos I saw. My grandparents parents weren't fat, so far as we can tell from their pics.
I'm overweight. In fact, by the new guidelines, I'm obese- 230lbs / 6'2".
Frankly, I blame the chinese. Food that is- it's too good eatin... now where's my 5lbs for 5$ special
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This is the real story here. Everyone missed that in their haste to post about counting calories (hint, there is no s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While it is true that the enzymes in the body can be more or less efficient between different people, and that some people can be better or worse at extracting all the available calories in the foods in the digestive tract, the fact remains that weight gain or loss equals calories in minus calories consumed. Perhaps her appetite was higher. Perhaps she was a little more efficient at storing fat. But enough excuses - that simply means she needs to eat a little
Re:I'm skeptical... (Score:5, Informative)
I am a physicist, and what you are claiming is highly implausible to the point of being what we men of science term utter bullshit. Allow me to explain:
1. In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
2. Let's say she really is eating only 300 Calories a day (54,000 Cal in 6 months), and that she gained 35 pounds in six months. Normally, a pound of body fat contains about 3,500 Calories (pure fat is 9 Cal / g, but some of that pound is water). 35 lb X 3,500 Cal / lb = 122,500 Cal, which is 68,500 Calories more than she ate! (Never mind that a person typically burns somewhat over a thousand Calories a day at rest.)
3. This leaves a few possibilities:
a. The weight she gained was mostly water. Possible, but retaining water isn't true obesity.
b. She has a freak mutation that allows her to perform photosynthesis.
c. She has a freak mutation that has caused her body to grow a Stirling engine inside of her, and she was in thermal contact with hot and cold reservoirs with which the Stirling engine could exchange energy, thus allowing her to convert atmospheric CO2 and water into sugars, etc.
d. Some of the most fundamental and firmly held laws of physics are wrong.
e. You're wrong.
Those are the facts. The fact that you do not like those facts does not change reality.
Re:I'm skeptical... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you say above is actually impossible for an adult human. No one burns fewer than 300 calories per day simply by breathing.
(I suppose the person in question could have consumed copius amounts of water, enough to offset the huge caloric deficit that was causing actual tissue to be consumed, but that wouldn't be fat gain.)
Yes, how quickly your body burns calories is in part genetic. And yes, if you get an overabundance of calories, genetics helps to determine where the excess goes (in other words, the percent that gets stored as fat). But genetics can't overcome the laws of physics. Mass and energy can't be created out of thin air.
Re:I'm skeptical... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, you claim a gain of 35lbs over 6 months. That's ~183 days. According to wikipedia, 1lb of fat gain is roughly equal to an excess intake of 3500 calories, meaning that 122,500 calories of fat were gained over the 183 day period.
122,500 calories gained in fat / ~183 days = ~669 calories gained in fat per day. You are claiming a daily intake of only 400 calories from ramen. Clearly, your scenario violates the laws of physics.
Nite_Hawk
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, she spent hours lying in the sun and photosynthesizing. I tried to warn her about that, but would she listen? No!
I'm confused (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Simple to unconfuse you... everone has a limit... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also... (Score:3, Interesting)
Another reason governments have shy'ed away from the food industry is due to most people's feeling that they have the right to choose what they want to eat. I mean, think about it, there would be an uproar if we could no longer put salt on our food. Or can not use butter on a piece of bread. Or make a flourless chocolate cake. Or, etc., etc., etc... People simply won't stand for it. What you can do is educate people on how to properly eat
Re:Simple to unconfuse you... everone has a limit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, food is the problem. It is a problem in U.S. The best way to notice is to move there from a part of the world that still cooks their meals at home and don't have a McFatolds at any corner. I grew up in Eastern Europe. Growing up my mother prepared a large array of home foods, all kinds. I have always loved fruits (like apples and peaches) and vegetables and legumes (like tomatoes, garlic and beans). Everything was prepared at home by my mother from raw ingridients, we didn't even eat out because we couldn't afford it.
When I came to U.S. all my peers liked to eat hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, mac and cheese and of course, fries. They all hated vegetables! I thought "how sad", the chain resturants have gotten these kids addicted to crap. Now I am married to an american and my wife still gets excited a lot more about pizza, fries and mac and cheese even though she rationally knows that grilled chicken with a light tomato sauce, or a salad with olive oil and vinegar is much better -- that doesn't matter. The emotional response for her is that "junk foods are somehow FUN!" and "veggies are BORING!".
Perception makes a huge difference. I see a pot of beans and I get excited -- "Woo, beans and toast!" she sees it and thinks "Yuk, but I guess I have to eat cause it's supposed to be better than a McFatburger".
My theory is that children here are just not exposed to good food. Just look at what babies and toddlers start eating here -- cerial, high carb, high fructose corn syrup + carbs kind of foods. Have you ever seen a "children's" menu in U.S.? -It is the "happy heart-attack by the time you are 30 in a shiny box" -- fries, corndogs, pizza and hamburgers. All these children grow up and do we really expect them to one day say "Hmm, I think I'll have some caviar or a grilled chicken breast with basil and olive oil?" No, they will still eat the same crap they grewu up eating. Everyone is obsessed about the calories they eat, I think they should be obsessing more about the quality of the food, not just pure calories.
Absurd conclusion as many families know (Score:5, Insightful)
Crappy writeup by xiox (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Crappy writeup by xiox (Score:5, Informative)
Moo (Score:5, Insightful)
When kids exercise more, they also eat more, and the body tries to retain the same reserves while burning off more calories. Eating no more, or just a little more, will be fine and the subject will still lose weight.
It's when the eating leads to significantly ore eating that there is a problem.
So, exercise and diet are required. But that isn't news. We've known this for quite some time.
Other long term effects (Score:3, Interesting)
Both quotes from:http://www.slate.com/id/2161615/ [slate.com]
Nutrionists Discover Free Energy! (Score:5, Funny)
Startling--this is apparently the next wave of human evolution--a breed of child that can expend energy without depleting any of its energy reserves.
It is only a matter of time before this unlicensed borrowing from the aether bears grave repercussions for the laws of physics.
In the meanwhile, however, I suggest rigging up these children to some sort of power collection device. We can retard global warming by moving away from fossil fuels to infinite-energy-children fuels, and thereby ensure a safe future for our mutant underlords!
Re:Nutrionists Discover Free Energy! (Score:5, Insightful)
The comment was well hidden deep inside the article... As usual.
It makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
If this study is true, then I would like to build a car powered by children on excercise wheels. It seems clear to me that they don't require any extra energy to excercise so, hey, free energy.
Re: (Score:2)
Bicycle commuting does help! Personal testimony (Score:5, Informative)
I have embarked on a daily program of commuting by bicycle 10 miles
round trip and a weekly ride of 50 miles round trip since August of
2006 and I have notice a big difference.
I have lost at least three to four inches on my waist and I have been
feeling a lot better overall.
Lately, I have increased my riding so that I do the 50 mile round trip two
to three times per week. A goal is to average three to four days per week
where I do the 50 mile round trip. That trip by the way also includes a
900 foot hill each way.
My manager at work has told me that he's seen a big difference as early as
October (2 months after I started this program).
One complaint that I do have is that my childhood shcool did not let us ride
our bikes to school. I hope that this policy is changed.
Perhaps if we let (or insist) that our kide ride bicycles to and from school,
this might help. It may also eliminate the guzzling and belching shcool
busses.
Hugs and peace
Re:Bicycle commuting does help! Personal testimony (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Eliminate PE 2. But Little tubs on Atkins (Score:5, Informative)
2. If other diets haven't worked, try putting Little Tubby on Atkins. No, it won't necessarily work for everyone. It depends on the type of metabolism you have. But if you've tried low-fat and it doesn't work, Atkins (or another carb-restrictive diet) might.
Phys Ed good, Atkins, not so much (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Phys Ed gives kids activity to expend energy. Studies show exercise helps not just the body but the mind.
2) Phys Ed encourages physical activity which is important as an Adult. Exercise may not help childhood obesity (which is still questionable, you know how these quack studies pop up on slashdot regularly just to drum up hits), but it definitely helps as you are an adult.
3) What's wrong with learning about Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Football, Lacrosse, Archery, Wrestling, track, tennis, softball, volleyball, bowling, or Badminton? If we shouldn't learn about these activities, then we shouldn't anything past the 6th grade. If this isn't important, then Shakespeare, Calculus, world history, and Chemistry aren't important.
As for Atkins, that's a half assed answer to health for kids. You don't just try diets to get a kids weight down. That's poor education. If you keep a kid active, regulate how much they eat and they are still obese, take them to a doctor and get it looked at. Otherwise don't obsess about their weight, and don't go crazy. Some kids will be fat, others won't. Teach them to feel good about themselves, don't teach them to go nuts about their weight and start getting them on ties as some kind of experiment.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
According to this study that's true. However, this is one study. Let's look at others, like th studies that say active kids DO keep their weight down.
Obviously you haven't played the sports then. You can only learn so much as an armchair quarter
Re:1. Eliminate PE 2. But Little tubs on Atkins (Score:4, Interesting)
Follow these food intake guidelines:
By Proportion:
* 45% Fat.
* 28% Protein.
* 27% Carbohydrates.
By Calorie:
* 55% Animal Products
* 45% Plant Products.
By Weight:
* 2/3 Plant products
* 1/3 Animal products.
Preferred Carbohydrate Sources:
* Foods with low glycemic load.
* Unprocessed plant products.
* Foods with a low glycemic index.
Non-Preferred Food Items & Ingredients:
* High glycemic index foods.
* Rice, primarily processed white rices.
* Patatos.
* Foods derived from highly processed grains.
* If you can't see the grains don't eat it.
* Mono/Di saccharides (Sugar, Corn syrup,
* Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, fats, and lipids.
* Shortening.
"Always read food labels and choose foods without trans fats. Or - if partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or shortening is on the label - choose foods that have them near the end of the ingredient list (labels list ingredients from most to least). Starting in 2006, FDA has required that all "Nutrition Facts" labels on food list trans fat content. If partially hydrogenated oil is on the label, the food is not trans fat free." http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr/pr083-05.shtm
Another Factor: Hormones in Food (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't buy it that people's genetic makeup has changed that much in just a few decades that we are now turning out little fat farm children. It's too convenient of an excuse. Exercise and diet are two big factors that also govern obesity. As others pointed out, sedentary sweet-eating children become sedentary sweet-eating and fat teenagers and adults.
But a factor not so many know about are all the hormones injected into animals and added to their food so they get nice, fat, and juicy faster and on less food. Humans also respond to a lot of those hormones. Just the way the animals do.
High Frutose corn syrup (Score:3, Informative)
cheap by-product sweetner that adds as much a 1/3" to your triglicerid count (translates into fat)
You can drop your weight by simply removing it from your diet. I lost 30 pounds in less then three months that way and others I've told have lost weight for removing it from their diet.
Re:High Frutose corn syrup (Score:5, Funny)
Is there a relationship between... (Score:2)
I always figured there was a reason they called them the "laws" of thermodynamics.
Sports and Fast Food? (Score:2)
Ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when do accelerometers measure the amount of calories you burn? I could quite easily sit on a weight machine all day pumping iron, with an accelerometer sitting on my waist saying I'm doing no exercise.
Unless these kids have found some sort of way to violate the conservation of energy, the kids that run around, instead of, say, sitting in one place, will have burned more calories than the other.
I've worked with programs that do athletics with kids in afterschool settings, and believe me, they make a big difference in terms of childhood obesity. They aren't just exercise programs, but teach nutrition, healthy lifestyle choices, etc.
Wow who knew there were thin people on slashdot. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously though all the study showed was that fat kids tend to move around about as much as thin kids. That really has little to do with how in shape they are or how many calories they burn siting still due to having more muscle etc etc. Plus the human body can use vastly different methods to convert energy and all of them have different efficiency values.
For example did the overweight kid stop running as soon as his body switched over to aerobic energy conversion because his lungs started hurting from breathing harder than usual? Theres no way the device can know something crucial like that unless it monitors more than mere movement.
Uh (Score:2)
Not Magic? (Score:4, Informative)
The equation of obesity is not as simple as 3500kcal = 1lb. There are MANY factors that even for an underfed individual can cause them to gain weight...Just ask anyone who has ever been on prednisone. . .
The following are just a few more examples of the things that are making us fat:
Thyroid --- yup... it is possible that up to 10% of women have some amount of thyroid dysfunction. This is the metabolism center of your body... hmmm. Why so many? Might it be due to the flouride in most peoples water system that is known to damage the thyroid? It's curious that the "epidemic" began around the same time as water flouidation was introduced. Curiously, one of the first signs of hypothyroidism (that goes away with treatment) is an elevated blood pressure and cholesterol.
Insulin --- All that high fructose corn syrup confuses the insulin cycle in your body and may cause it to store fat. Interestingly, the satiation that regular cane sugar delivers is due to part of the insulin cycle that does not react the same with HFCS and causes one to eat more.
Cortisol --- Steroids, natural, environmental, or introduced drugs will all cause weight gain and hormonal problems. A friend of mine with lupus, who was having chemo as well as taking prednisone (cortisone) gained 50 lbs even though she vomited everything she ate for 2 months. Think stress. Interestingly, cortisol increases cholesterol and heart problems.
Hormones --- everyone knows the birth control pill makes you gain weight. What you didn't know is that in many of the plastics we eat off of, drink out of, or have our food packaged in contain chemicals that mimica sex hormones, and can cause symptoms of increased testosterone or estrogen such as weight gain, hirutism, baldness, gynocomastia, sexual dysfunction, and depression.
Monosodium Glutimate --- Before this salt became one of the most ubiquitous flavorings in pre-packaged foods, it was used in laboratories to create obese mice and rats. Yup... researchers found that adding MSG to the rodent's food not only caused them to eat more, but also increased (non-lean) body mass for mice on a regulated diet. A "safe" level of MSG has never been determined, and in many countries this additive is banned from food. In america, almost everything contains MSG. The food manufacturer's response: it will help the elderly eat more and gain weight. Yeah, but what is it doing to our children?
Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
The total energy expenditure (TEE) of the human body is determined by the following equation:
TEE = BMR + PA + TEF
BMR = Basal metabolic rate
This is proportional to the lean body mass, not the BMI (which is a really bad measure of obesity). This is typically 60 - 70% of your TEE
PA = Energy expended during physical activity
This consists of around 20% of your energy expenditure
TEF = Thermic effect of food
This is the energy expended to digest food, typically 10% of kcal's consumed. This really doesn't really come into play in weight gain since eating more food still gives you excess calories (albeit at 90%) and eating less is still fewer calories.
In other words, the majority of your energy expenditure is determined by your basal metabolic rate by a ratio of around 3.5 to 1. This is especially true in children whose BMR's are naturally higher than most adults'. This is not to say that exercise isn't useful. BMR is determined by lean body mass, which is determined by your muscle mass, which is determined by genetics and exercise. Exercise does help you lose weight, but it takes a lot longer than diet. Exercise also has independent benefits on cardiovascular health and a host of other health measures.
So all those people who tell you that losing weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise aren't lying. That's simply the science.
The "study" included some sumo wrestlers..? (Score:2)
My diet doubled, and I never gained a single pound, except for 10 lbs muscle gained during track season's weight-training, and which I would burn off during the next cross country season. Everyone in the sport was skinny as a rail, and had ultra-lean, and extraordinarily enduring muscles.
It is also true that I don't normally gain weight outside of that sport, but as I said, while I was running my caloric intake doubled.
It is with that observation that I declare the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was eating twice the normal amount of food and running 12 miles a day. In other words, I did get more exercise. I could have run a marathon. You're telling me that the person next door was in the same shape as I was? Well, no, they weren't. Nobody in the entire school was, really, except the other runners. Back then, I would run a couple mile
The model, from BFFM (Score:5, Informative)
Your body is designed to keep you alive, even in hard times when it's difficult to get enough food. Thus, if you simply cut your calories back (say, to 1200 kCal per day) your body will store fat at every chance it gets. If you are really only eating 1200 kCal per day, yet burning more than that, you must burn fat (and perhaps some good stuff like muscle) so you will lose weight. However, your body will store fat any chance it can, so if you eat extra you can gain fat, and once you stop the 1200 kCal per day regimen you are almost certain to gain fat. Worse, it is likely you lost muscle during the 1200 kCal per day regimen.
So, the goal is for you to lose fat, without your keep-you-alive tricks kicking in and making your body stubbornly try to store fat. BFFM recommends multiple, smaller meals each day, rather than a few big ones. If you are eating every 3 hours, how can you be starving to death? Everything must be okay, so your body will let go of the fat. Also you need to get enough sleep, and try to avoid stress in general; stress is a signal that you are in hard times.
Muscle is your friend for fat loss. Muscle burns calories 24/7, so having more muscle means your daily base calorie burn goes up. This paragraph is important, so feel free to read it again.
The primary way to lose fat is through "cardio" exercise, aka aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, various gym machines like the elliptical or the stair climber, etc.
Another good thing is to eat a diet that fires up your metabolism. Imagine for a second that you had an entire mouthful of glucose, and you swallowed it all. That will pass straight out of your stomach and go straight into your blood as blood sugar, so it's just about 100% efficient as a food. For fat loss, this is a bad thing. How about a mouth full of vegetable oil? Pretty darn easy to digest, and it will be easily stored as fat since it's fat to start out. Imagine instead you have a mouthful of lean protein (skinless chicken breast, if you eat meat; non-fat cottage cheese if you are vegetarian, say). First of all you will expend some effort chewing, and then your digestive system has to work very hard to tear apart the proteins and turn them into something that can pass into the blood stream. If I recall correctly, you can burn about 30% of the calories in a serving of lean protein, just in the effort it takes to digest it. So the bottom line rule here is: complex carbs, high fiber, and lean protein are much better than simple carbs, low fiber, and high fat foods. Corollary: if you want seconds of anything, let it be lean protein.
So, BFFM tells you how to calculate a good portion size, so you don't eat too much. (If my instincts were good and I naturally took a good portion size, I'd probably not need a book like BFFM.) BFFM encourages multiple, smaller meals, with a high proportion of lean protein, and as much natural whole foods as possible (eat apples, not apple pie). BFFM encourages working out to increase lean muscle mass, plus cardio exercise to actively burn fat. If you do everything in the book, you will lose fat, unless you are one of the fraction-of-a-percent people who have a medical condition that keeps them fat all the time. (And if you are, you have probably figured that out by now.)
Tom Venuto has nothing good to say about BMI. He points out that bodybuilders with less than six percent body fat might still have a high BMI, because muscle is heavy. Body fat percentage is the best indicator, and it's not that hard to get a useful measurement.
He also has nothing good to say about Atkins. Carbs aren't your enemy; you need some. And the idea that you can eat as much fat as you want is just insane. You don't need t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The primary way to lose fat is through "cardio" exercise, aka aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, various gym machines like the elliptical or the stair climber, etc.
Cardio exercise is a good way to lose weight, but it's very easy to deceive yourself because the exercise itself often burns off mostly water weight. Believe me, it's fun to get on the scale after a summer run and see you've lost 2 lbs, but
Life Style changes (Score:5, Insightful)
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we
rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and
NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because,
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms.......
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth
AND
there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!
---
About sums it up.
The China Study (Score:3, Interesting)
The processed foods that many of us eat appears to be the culprit for many of our current ills, including obesity and diabetes. And overloading our bodies with too much protein is simply doing all kinds of damage in the long run. We simply do not need that much protein, and we get an adequate amount of it from plant-based foods.
Dairy is bad news as well, and should be avoided.
As a father of a vegetarian household, where we've been vegetarian for over 12 years, I must say my kids are healthy as oxes. And it just amazes me how misinformed most people are about diet and nutrition. One of my daughters keeps getting weird questions like, "so where do you get your protein?" Well, duh, every living thing has protein in it!!!!!
All I can say is read the book. This is not a fad book, but a serious scientific study. It does touch on the politics of meat as well, and I happen to agree with some of Campbell's conclusions. But seriously folks! The science is hard to deny.
The Hubris of Government (Score:3, Interesting)
And this is not the only thing that this works for. Force us to wear seatbelts and we increase the level of risk taking that we take while driving. Why? Because the enforced reduction of risk through seatbelts allows us to feel relatively safe. And feeling safe, we will take risks elsewhere.
IMHO, this is a perfect example of the hubris of government. And I find it ironic that at the end of the article, it suggests repeating that hubris by regulating the food industry. If we are forced out of bad but convenient food that we freely choose, what consequence will it have? What choice will we make to increase our convenience? Will we choose not to eat at those restaurants because we don't like the taste of the new regulated foods that are available? Will that increase unemployment? Will that result in increased poverty levels? Good grief, these people need to study economics before they start making policy recommendations!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exercising regularly forces your body to burn significantly more calories during rest than you would without exercise.
This is how I was able to lose 10 lbs a month by subtracting a mere 500 calories a day from my diet and exercising. Your formulas would basically make this impossible.
Go RTFA. (Score:2)
Try RTFA. The point of the article is that those kids who engage in school-related sports are less active at other times. This means that school sports has almost nothing to do with activity level in kids.
Since there is no corelation between school sports and exercise, then of course there will be no corelation between school sports and calories burned and BMI.
The whole point of t
Try reading the article (Score:3, Informative)
The study discovered that children who don't participate in organised sport do the same amount of exercise through unorganised 'play' as those who do.
Basically, it seems that if you force a child to play soccer for an hour at
Re:Everyone knows (Score:4, Insightful)
Running 20 minutes on a treadmill probably does nothing, but running 5-10 miles a day for 30-60 minutes burns a whole heck of a lot of calories and will waste you away to nothing.
Also the type of sports has a huge difference. My normal weight is 175lbs. When I ran long distance in high school (17-19 yrs old) I weighed 145-155. When I played rugby in college (19-22) I weighed 180-185 lbs. Running burns so many calories your muscles drop down to their bare minimum. Rugby builds mass and weight. I was equally fit in either sport.
Re:Everyone knows (Score:5, Insightful)
While I have not read all the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, and we should also accept patents for perpetual motion machines, engines which run on Brown's Gas, etc.
Or not. There's this little thing called "thermodynamics" which tends to get in the way.
The only diet book you'll ever need: http://www.google.com/search?q=hackers+diet [google.com]
Re:Everyone knows (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To treat the problem through exercise would probably involve hours of running around, which just seems unreasonable.
Are you insane? Since when is running hours around unreasonable? There is nothing unreasonable about sending your kids outside to run around playing tag/riding bikes/playing kickball/etc... for 3 - 5 hours a day. I live with two friends that are both divorced and have kids. When the kids are over for the weekend I run them around outside doing all sorts of active things for easily 3 - 5 hours, and they enjoy it. Usually they show up wanting to get outside because when they stay with their mom's they aren'
Re:Everyone knows (Score:5, Funny)
I hope you aren't an engineer.
RTFGP (Score:3, Insightful)
He didn't say that sports made you lose weight. He said that aerobic activity (like running a lot) led to a leaner state of fitness than anaerobic activity (like Rugby training), and thus that BODY MASS was not a good indicator of overall FITNESS.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The maths I've seen seem to indicate that your mass will 'seek' towards a value for which the food energy consumed is equal to the energy dissipated. It's a simple integrating process, and it's one which only humans can control. Studies have shown that simply increasing physical activity causes a proportional increase in appetite, so at some point you need to either w
Nobody RTFA! (Score:5, Interesting)
1) (And most relevant to the politics) Access to sporting facilities had negligible effect on the activity of children. Children with access to sporting facilities used them, got tired, and were not very active when they got home. Children without access got home and, not having had a chance ot do sporting stuff at school, were more active outside of school. So, basically, the body is wired to get X amount of activity a day, and if it doesn't get it at sporting facilities paid for by the state, will get it after school anyway. Ergo, spending money on sporting facilities doesn't help kids get more excercise.
2) (And this is a specious conclusion) Amount of activity has no bearing on the child's Body Mass Index. They try and make this say that therefore, activity has nothing to do with obesity, but BMI is a body-mass index, not an obesity index. If you have fat, and you exercise, you may very well lose fat and get thinner and not lose any weight, because you also tend to gain muscle when you exercise. so kids who exercise may way the same as kids who don't, but are still probably much less fat.
Now, if the study measured how much FAT the kids had and didn't notice a difference with excercise, then they might be on to something, but they didn't, so they're not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess that the BMI was just a nameplate for "tendence to obesity", for the normal folks to understand what they were actually studying without just talking about "fat children". And then there is surely a correlation between the BMI and the percentage of bod
Re:Nobody RTFA! (Score:5, Funny)
Also, they have bigger bones.
Re:Everyone knows (Score:4, Insightful)
A grown man jogging (fast) burns around 100 kcal per 10 minutes. I'm assuming it's less for kids (because they're smaller).
Now compare this with the calories in a 65g Mars bar = 294 kcal.
Or in a Big Mac = 492kcal.
So let me sum it up: kids aren't fat because they're not getting exercise... they're fat because they eat CRAP all the time.
Re:Everyone knows (Score:4, Informative)
you can eat burgers all day long, as long as you remove the bun and the lettuce first (ok, maybe not big macs - real meat)
the mars bar, on the other hand, will kill you: with all that sugar (fructose!), the fat gets instantly stored, you get no nutritional energy and after the short, addictive sugar high you feel hungry again - time for another? how about washing it down with a high-fructose soda?
Re:Everyone knows (Score:5, Insightful)
"weight loss" is a red herring (Score:3, Informative)
You can be thin and still be the same weight as someone who's fat.
That's why "BMI" is a joke... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. Look at how much bodybuilders weigh. BMI certainly doesn't apply there.
BMI is bad math from start to finish. Ask any tall/short people where they lie on the chart, they're either clinically obese (tall) or anorexic (short). The math only works if you're average height.
Clue: People are three dimensional but the BMI math only has a power of two in it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. This was the case 30-50 years ago. People in the U.S., at leas