http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto..._food&printer=1

Fast Food Is Lure to Overweight Children
Wed Oct 15,10:21 PM ET


By DANIEL Q. HANEY, AP Medical Editor

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Overweight children appear to be especially susceptible to the lure of fast food, a study found. They stuff themselves even more ravenously than other youngsters do and are less able to compensate by eating sparingly the rest of the day.


The study is nutrition experts' latest attempt to nail down the link they suspect exists between fast food and the daunting increase in obesity, which now afflicts one in 10 children and teenagers in the United States.


Even though the drive-through window is often blamed for Americans' big and growing weight problem, its exact role is less clear, since people overindulge in many ways while getting little exercise. Certainly the meals can be huge and calorie dense. But many indulge in the occasional triple cheeseburger with bacon without bulking up.


"Everybody is eating fast food, in all socio-economic groups," notes Dr. David Ludwig, a child obesity expert. "But if everybody is eating it, why are some people still thin?"


His team at Boston's Children's Hospital set out to find the answer by setting up an experiment at a food court. The volunteer eaters were 26 obese children and 28 who were of normal size.


"Eat as much or as little as you like, until you have had enough," the youngsters were told. "There is more food available, and you may eat as much as you want."


Everyone started out with the equivalent of a supersize value meal of chicken nuggets, fries, cola and cookies that added up to 2,100 calories. And eat they did. Large or lean, the children wolfed down plenty of food.


"They consume more than half of the calories they need for the whole day in about 20 minutes," Ludwig said.


But in the end, the big kids ate more. The obese youngsters downed 67 percent of their daily calories in one sitting, while the normal-size ones got 57 percent.


Next, the researchers made an unannounced call to see how much the same youngsters eat over a whole day when on their own. On a day they had fast food, the obese youngsters ate a total of 400 more calories than on a day when they ate at home. However, the lean kids ate the same amount of total calories whether they had a fast food meal or not.


They concluded that overweight children are more susceptible to gargantuan fast food meals because they do not have — or have somehow lost — the ability to even out their intake by cutting back over the rest of the day.


"Do certain people have trouble compensating for energy-dense fast food? This study suggests overweight people may," said Simone French, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota.


The research was presented at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, which concluded Wednesday. Among other reports at the meeting:


_Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have been following 1,337 men since their graduation from medical school between 1948 and 1964. They found that the average weight gain was one-third of a pound per year up to age 65. After that, weight plateaus, and losing weight in later years is not healthy or normal.


_To test the theory that people eat less if they take smaller bites, researchers from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., fitted overweight volunteers with a "behavior modification tool" that "fits into the upper palate of the mouth and reduces the size of the oral cavity." In the two-day experiment, the gadget cut their daily intake by 659 calories. A longer study will be necessary to prove it works over time to reduce weight.


_Russ Lopez of Boston University looked for a link between urban sprawl and obesity. He rated sprawl in U.S. metropolitan areas on a 100-point scale and matched it with the amount of physical activity people reported in a nationwide survey. For each one-point increase in sprawl, people's physical activity declined by one-third of 1 percent.


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Medical Editor Daniel Q. Haney is a special correspondent for The Associated Press.

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On the Net:

http://www.naaso.org

Fascinating stuff.
I think they are coming at this backwards, however. They are always thinking, "Okay, what are the heavy kids doing differently?" Instead of thinking, "What's different about the other kids?"

It's a very good point. Among my 2 kids and 2 step kids are 4 different body types.

My 9-year-old stepson is thin as a twig (less than 60 lbs) and although sometimes he eats a gargantuan amount of food, other times he barely can finish half a sandwich. My 6-year-old son weighs about 62 lbs, he's built with a wider bone structure--broad face, feet, hips, but he often claims to be hungry even after eating a large meal... with a few exceptions, particularly at breakfast, when he is not hungry. My 4-year-old is by nature a cookie monster but is built narrow and leaner than my 6-year-old--he almost never eats to excess. My two kids are almost vegetarian... they eat some chicken and fish, but prefer eggs and dairy and nuts as their primary source of protein. Getting them to eat a variety of protein foods is often difficult because they love grains, particularly crackers. I have to watch their intake of carbs because they tend to be borderline ADHD and when they eat too much sugar or carbs, it's like watching someone get possessed. My 12-year-old stepdaughter has long lean legs, but is built thickly in her abdomen and chest--I know that she eats a lot of junk food after school--she's a regular soda drinker and candy-eater, and I worry about it for her sake. It's tough for her as well because she is going through puberty and has the hormonal mood swings and headaches... I'm almost sure that she has a problem with caffeine and sugar, but between two households and the tension between ex's it is very difficult to ingrain good habits with her.

It's hard being a parent who doesn't want to come across as a low-carb Nazi and end up with kids who have obsessive eating disorders on one hand, and on the other hand trying to ensure that my kids eat a decent meal. I can't get my kids to eat veggies, except for the tomato sauce on their pizza--but I can get them to eat a little fruit--I have resolved to using daily vitamins, and I hope that this helps round out their diet. I wish they would eat more veggies and fiber in general, but short of force-feeding or withholding meals, I cringe at the thought of trying to do battle over food.

It would be nice if there was a satiety button that would allow those of us who like large portions to get us to eat less on a regular basis or get satisfied more quickly. Some of us really enjoy the pleasure of eating--flavors, tastes, textures, and I wish it didn't feel so good! I suspect that folks who are naturally thin have a good satiety mechanism that keeps them from overindulging.

I mean not all thin folks eat low carbs naturally--in fact it is often just the opposite. I would venture that most of them are just better at eating less.

All it takes is 100 extra unburned calories a day to put on 10 lbs a year--and that's not very much.

>>"It would be nice if there was a satiety button that would allow those of us who like large portions to get us to eat less on a regular basis or get satisfied more quickly."

Funny you say that: they just invented one.

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=142642

*shrug*

... I was hoping for a more "natural" solution :-) ... per se the autonomic button, rather than the battery-operated one! Not that it isn't somehow intriguing... perhaps there's a natural way to trip the switch. I think that us recovering carb addicts try to do that with the generous fats and proteins, but even so, I know that I find myself hungry quite a lot.

There's gotta be something about those of us who have been addicted to carbs. Even with all the great low carb food that I eat, I still find myself pushing the limits of normal portions.

That's what scares me about going into the later phases of low carb... as you add the carbs back in, the fat ultimately has to go down, and I can see having a very hard time letting go of the generous natural fats I can eat while on OWL to accomodate more carbs--I know I'm going to want both....

I think that's why a lot of people have a hard time after they lose weight with Atkins--from what I've read it's extremely important do go back to more carbs gradually.