Those are the findings of the study “Weight status as a predictor of being bullied in third through sixth grades,” which is available online now and will be published in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics. Julie C. Lumeng, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, is lead author of the study.

Childhood obesity and bullying are both pervasive public health problems. Obesity among children in the United States has risen to epidemic proportions with 17 percent of 6 to 11 year olds estimated to be obese between 2003 and 2006. In addition, parents of obese children rate bullying as their top health concern and past studies have shown that obese children who are bullied experience more depression anxiety and loneliness.

The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between childhood obesity and being bullied in third, fifth, and sixth grades. While studies on bullying and obesity in children have been conducted before, none had controlled for factors such as socioeconomic status, race, social skills and academic achievement.

Further, this study is unique in that it specifically looks at the age range when bullying peaks – ages 6 to 9.

Researchers studied 821 children who were participating in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. These children were recruited at birth in 10 study sites around the country.

Researchers evaluated the relationship between the child’s weight status and the odds of being bullied as reported by the child, mother, and teacher. The study accounted for grade level in school, gender, race, family income-to-needs ratio, racial and socioeconomic composition of the school, and child social skills and academic achievement as reported by mothers and teachers.

Researchers found that obese children had higher odds of being bullied no matter their gender, race, family socioeconomic status, school demographic profile, social skills or academic achievement.

Authors conclude that being obese, by itself, increases the likelihood of being a victim of bullying. Interventions to address bullying in schools are badly needed, Lumeng adds.

“Physicians who care for obese children should consider the role that being bullied is playing in the child’s well-being,” Lumeng says. “Because perceptions of children are connected to broader societal perceptions about body type, it is important to fashion messages aimed at reducing the premium placed on thinness and the negative stereotypes that are associated with being obese or overweight.”

While the study did not look into interventions to address bullying in this population, the hope is that these results could prove useful in doing so, Lumeng says.

Additional authors: Patrick Forrest, B.S., of the University of Michigan; Danielle P. Appugliese, M.P.H., of the Boston University School of Public Health; Niko Kaciroti, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan; Robert Corwyn, Ph.D., of the University of Arkansas in Little Rock; and Robert Bradley, Ph.D., of the Arizona State University.

Funding source paragraph: This work was supported in part by the American Heart Association Mid-west Affiliate Grant-in-Aid 0750206Z to Dr. Lumeng.

Patents/conflict disclosures: None

Journal reference: DOI: 10.1542/peds.2009-0774

Source
University of Michigan Health System

Writing in the Washington Post on Friday, retired US army generals John M. Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, referred to several sources, including the US Army’s own analysis of national data that shows as of 2005, and the figures have changed little since, 27 per cent of Americans aged 17 to 24, some 9 million young adults, were too overweight to serve in the military.

The leading medical reason recruits are rejected for military service in the US today is being overweight or obese, wrote Shalikashvili and Shelton, both members of the executive advisory council of Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit organization of retired senior military leaders, who referred also to a recent report from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research that showed over the last 15 years the proportion of potential recruits who have not passed their physical exam because of their weight has gone up nearly 70 per cent.

This is backed up by data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who report that the number of states where 40 per cent or more of young adults are overweight or obese has risen dramatically from only one in 1998 to 39 in 2008.

This not the first time the military has spoken out about how the health of America’s children poses a threat to national security: the last time was in 1945 when they expressed concern about the poor health and nutrition of potential recruits, and Congress responded by creating a national school lunch program.

But it appears that the school lunch program has now gone too far in fuelling children with calorie-laden french fries, pizza and other unhealthy foods.

About 40 per cent of American children’s calories are consumed during school hours, and Mission: Readiness proposes that if properly managed, the school environment could be the key to getting children to eat more healthily, as suggested in a recent paper published in Health Affairs in March, where researchers from Rice University and the University of Houston concluded that the most effective way to combat obesity in poor children is to increase their participation in federal nutrition programs.

Shalikashvili and Shelton note that saving some of the $75 billion dollars the US spends every year on obesity-related medical expenses could pay for school districts to provide children with more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and cut down on foods with too much sugar, salt, fat and calories.

Mission: Readiness wants Congress to pass new child nutrition legislation that:

• Takes the junk food and high-calorie drinks out of schools.
• Brings in new standards for school meals based on the latest Institute of Medicine recommendation: the current ones are 15 years out of date.
• Supports the Obama administration’s proposed increase of $1 billion per year for 10 years for improved child nutrition programs.
• Develops researched and proven ways for schools to help parents and children adopt healthy eating and exercise habits for life.

Retired Navy Rear Adm. James Barnett Jr, a member of the officers group, said at a recent press conference held by Mission: Readiness , that national security in the year 2030 is “absolutely dependent” on reversing child obesity rates.

“When over a quarter of young adults are too fat to fight, we need to take notice,” said Barnett, according to a report by Associated Press.

The obesity problem doesn’t just affect recruitment, Mission: Readiness reports that the government spends tens of millions of dollars every year replacing military personnel that have to be discharged because of weight issues.

The School Nutrition Association (SNA) recently commended the call to increase funds for school nutrition programs, and pointed out that while a lot is already happening, there are problems where more money would make a huge impact.

For instance, in their 2009 report, the SNA said that across the country, nearly every school district was now offering students fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains, with low-fat dairy products, salad bars and pre-packaged salads, but because of extremely limited budgets, they struggle to pay for the extra refrigeration, steamers, labor and other expenses involved.

Sources: Associated Press, Washington Post, Mission Readiness, MNT archives.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD

A survey of eating habits among first year self-catering students showed that university lifestyle tends to lead to an increased consumption of fast foods.

This was more noticeable amongst male students, who confessed to thinking of cooking as ‘women’s work’ and were more likely to eat fast food than their female counterparts, while female students were more likely to be influenced by worries about weight gain and appearance.

The study, carried out by student Hannah Cooper under the supervision of Dr Ellen Annandale at the University of Leicester Department of Sociology, also indicated that students’ fast food consumption increased when they left home and began to cater for themselves, in spite of the known link between fast food consumption and obesity.

Convenience, peer pressure and budget appear to be the main reasons for their eating habits, while the gender difference is widened by a male culture of greater alcohol consumption though males also played more sport.

Another factor in students’ choice of fast foods was quite simply that they liked it. Pizza proved to be favourite, followed by pasta, curry and French fries.

While the students studied felt that living among new people had not influenced their eating habits, nevertheless peer pressure played a major role in decisions about when and what to eat and whether or not to cook for themselves.

Hannah Cooper commented: “Students might be tired and not feel like cooking. Fast food marketing makes it very accessible, and if several students combine to order fast food together then it becomes an even cheaper option.

“At home their parents probably provided their meals. They come to university and have to start managing and budgeting for themselves. They didn’t seem to have the knowledge of how to manage money in relation to food, and fast food was sometimes seen as cheaper than cooking.

“They knew that fast food was less healthy than home cooked food, but that knowledge wasn’t strong enough to override their lifestyle. Peer pressure can be very strong. One male student reported that when he ordered a salad at a pub his friends jeered at him.”

The Department of Health has linked fast food consumption to the growing rise in the nation’s obesity, yet one problem may be that eating unhealthily when young may not lead to obesity and health problems until later in life.

Of the sample consulted by Hannah Cooper, while 59% admitted their eating habits had changed for the worse, only 29% felt their weight had increased since becoming students, and these tended to be those who did less exercise and drank more alcohol.

The University of Leicester is developing strategies to combat students’ reliance on fast foods. Frances Stone from the Residential and Catering Services commented: “I found Hannah’s report very informative, giving support to our assumption based on anecdotal evidence. We encourage students to eat healthily and do hold regular Healthy Living weeks in residences. We support the studentcooking.tv, which is a lively, informative and stylish Internet-based video service that shows students how to cook great tasting meals on a budget.

“We have also arranged for a Student Survival Guide to be distributed to all students communal areas. This extensive guide gives students advice on healthy eating, shopping starter kits and techniques and equipment. It covers areas such as brain boosting breakfasts, energising lunches and simple budget beating meals. The guide concentrates on what students should be including in their diet.

“We look forward to continuing our work to help students find their way around the healthy living agenda”

Hannah Cooper is now taking her research further with a MSc in Social Research at the University of Leicester. “I would like to make a difference,” she said. “I think policies designed to improve the dietary behaviour of students should be tailored by gender and specific attention paid to the body dissatisfaction reported by females.

“My findings showed males as more likely to view work surrounding food as a female task. This may be due to the lack of socialisation they receive at home. Maybe intervention into the prevention of obesity in later life should start earlier for males and be undertaken in the home to produce the most beneficial results.”

Dr Annandale commented: “It isn’t just a question of knowledge, as many students are aware of what constitutes a healthy diet. It is the social context in which students live that pushes them towards a lifestyle that might be unhealthy.”

Source: Leicester University

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles generated 3D maps of over 200 healthy elderly people’s brains and found a pattern of diminished brain volume in people with specific DNA sequence within the fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) gene.

‘We’ve known for some time that there’s a link between obesity in mid life and the development of Alzheimer’s disease. However this study suggests that healthy people who carry a specific DNA sequence associated with obesity could be at a greater risk of developing dementia. A reduction in people’s brain tissue was observed but this wasn’t linked to other obesity-related factors such as cholesterol levels, diabetes or high blood pressure.

‘This is a relatively small study but the findings support the need for more research. One million people will develop dementia in the next 10 years but dementia research is desperately under-funded, however with the right investment, it can be defeated.’

Dr Susanne Sorensen
Head of Research
Alzheimer’s Society

Research reference: April Ho et al, University of California, Los Angeles, ‘A commonly carried allele of the obesity-related FTO gene is associated with reduced brain volume in healthy elderly’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2010.

Source
Alzheimer’s Society

University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have found that a modified version of a plan called “alternate-day fasting” may be easier to abide and has the added bonus of improving cardio health. The findings appear in the November 1 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“This diet has been around about 20 years, but its effect on weight loss hadn’t really been studied,” said Krista Varady, assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition, who led the UIC research team.

The 10-week trial studied 16 clinically obese people — 12 women and four men — between the ages of 35 and 65 who all weighed more than 210 pounds, had kept their weight stable for the previous three months, and had body mass indexes of between 30 and 39.9. None was diabetic, had a history of cardiovascular disease, was taking weight-loss or lipid- or glucose-lowering medications, or smoked.

The study was divided into three phases:

The first two weeks, participants ate and exercised normally.

Between weeks three and six, participants ate normal meals one day then would fast the next. On fast days, participants ate the equivalent of a three-course lunch prepared by UIC’s Human Nutritional Research Center. The meal provided between 20 and 25 percent of daily energy needs.

For the final four weeks, participants were counseled by dietitians on menu options, but essentially chose on their own what to eat, based on what they had learned about meal sizes and food choices.

“We wanted to see if they could actually do it by themselves — because what’s the point of studying this diet if you have to feed people meals prepared at metabolic kitchens all the time?” said Varady.

Weight loss ranged from 10 to 30 pounds; the researchers expected an average loss of only five pounds. Blood pressure and heart rate were also lowered, along with total cholesterol and circulating fat levels.

Varady hopes now to study the effects of staying on the diet for at least six months, looking for evidence of self-motivation and to see if the diet helps in maintaining proper weight.

“Why are some able to do it but others not? It takes about two weeks to adjust to the diet, after which people don’t feel hungry on the fast day,” she said.

“We need to find out how long they can stay on this diet — and if they go off it, do they automatically regain the weight?”

Co-authors on the study are doctoral students Surabhi Bhutani and Monica Klempel, and Emily Church, clinical coordinator in physical therapy at UIC. The study was supported by UIC departmental funding.

Source
University of Illinois at Chicago

The research group focused on the function of “orexin” neurons in brain. Orexin is a kind of brain hormones related to sleep/wakefulness and food intake. They found that orexin released in the brain from “orexin” neurons activates glucose metabolism in muscle but not adipose tissue in mice through the preferential activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Furthermore, they found that a pleasant meal with sweet taste stimulation and its anticipation activates orexin neurons and curbs the rise of blood glucose level by activating muscle metabolism via the sympathetic nervous system.

It is known that orexin plays an important role in the regulation of sleep/wakefulness and autonomic nervous system in human as well as experimental animals. Therefore, this finding implies the strong relationship between habits of diet and our health. Pleasant meal with tasty foods (of course, not high calorie) and with family and friends may prevent hyperglycemia by activating orexin neurons. In contrast, irregular dietary habits, especially eating fast food just before sleeping, may cause hyperglycemia and possibly obesity. “Orexin neurons have been shown to decrease the activity at night. Thus, eating just before sleeping may not be able to activate orexin neurons effectively, then resulting in hyperglycemia”, said Prof Minokoshi.

Source:
Prof Yasuhiko Minokoshi
National Institute for Physiological Sciences

Americans are eating healthier diets than they did in 1965, but college-educated people are doing better than high school dropouts, new research indicates.

That may seem obvious, but it wasn’t the case in 1965. Then, people who had not finished high school, those who were high school graduates and those who went to college all had about the same level of diet quality.

But a more recent survey by Barry Popkin, Ph.D., and colleagues from the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that while dietary quality has improved overall, those with more education now have much healthier diets.

‘In fact, the gap in diet between higher educated persons and lower educated persons may explain the large disparity in health between higher and lower socioeconomic groups in the United States,’ Popkin says.

The research is published in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Popkin emphasized that this study examined the composition of the diet, not energy intake or obesity.

Comparing dietary habits from 1965 and 1994-96, Popkin and colleagues measured the overall healthfulness of the diets of 6,475 respondents in 1965 and 9,241 in 1994-96. In two telephone calls on different days, respondents were asked to recall what they had eaten in the previous 24 hours.

They tabulated results using the Revised Dietary Quality Index, a rating of a diet’s overall healthfulness.

The effects of income and education were rarely significant in 1965, Popkin says. There were a few differences back then: College-educated people took in more calcium, iron and servings of fresh fruit than less-educated people did, but they also ate more saturated fats — which decreased their Dietary Quality Index.

Between 1965 and the mid-1990s, the overall Dietary Quality Index improved for all education groups. But better-educated people not only have better diets today compared to their counterparts 30 years ago, they also eat better than today’s high school dropouts.

Thirty years later, the effects of education are more pronounced. For instance, white men with no high school diploma scored 61.9 on the Dietary Quality Index, while their college-educated peers scored 68.3.

A similar gap separated black men in the same educational categories. Income variations produced far smaller differences, said Popkin.

‘In general,’ Popkin says, ‘extra years of schooling related to small upward shifts in diet quality. The highest diet quality level was found among white women who attended college and for those with income far above the poverty line.’

Comparison of the two surveys found some anomalies, as well. For instance, race alone did not always predict results. Black male high school graduates saw no change in their dietary quality scores, while black women with the same level of education saw significant gains.

An exception to the general dietary improvement was a drop in calcium intake, which Popkin blames on reduced milk consumption. Other researchers have noticed the same pattern with calcium, which is needed to build and maintain strong bones.

Besides calcium, the most striking dietary shortcoming in the 1994-96 survey came with a disappointingly small shift downward in the use of added sugar, discretionary fat, salt and alcohol.

Popkin said that by the 1994-96 survey, people were consuming less fat and cholesterol and more grains and vegetables. But this good news was overshadowed by the increasing prevalence of obesity in the United States, he said.

The Dietary Quality Index research model reflects proportion, variety and moderation in diet, but does not account for total energy intake, Popkin said. So while it showed a lower percentage of calories coming from fat (a sign of dietary improvement) because the consumption of fats remained constant, total calories increased, leading to a net weight gain.

Exactly why more education is linked to better diets wasn’t clear, Popkin says. Previous research showed that, more than income or occupation, lower levels of education were associated with higher disease risk.

‘It may be caused by a diffusion of knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs that occur while individuals are participating in the educational system,’ he says. Better-educated people may get better nutritional information or are more likely to act on it than those with less schooling.

‘Improving the education system in the United States may help to eliminate disadvantages in diet quality,’ Popkin concludes.

By Aaron Levin, staff writer
Health Behavior News Service

For more information:
Health Behavior News Service: 202-387-2829 or www.hbns.org.
Interviews: Contact Barry M. Popkin at 919-966-1732 or popkin@unc.edu.
American Journal of Preventive Medicine:
Contact the editorial office at 619-594-7344.