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Are Low-Carb Diets Unhealthy for Kids?

Yes, Say Some Experts, but That Shouldn't Mean More Cooking If You're on These Popular Plans

By Sid Kirchheimer

WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD on Friday, February 13, 2004

Feb. 13, 2004 -- Even if you're among the 10 million Americans currently on a low-carbohydrate diet, your children shouldn't be -- even if they are overweight. Experts tell WebMD that diets such as Atkins and South Beach can be unhealthy for growing kids, including those with growing waistlines.



"Low-carb diets are not a good choice for kids because children are nutritionally different than adults, and these diets are restrictive in many of the nutrients they need," says Joan Carter, RD, of the USDA-funded Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine. "Growing children need more calcium than adults, and their tissues need vitamins and minerals that come from fruits, vegetables, and grains. With diets that restrict these and other important nutrients, it shortchanges kids in a way that can affect their growth and development."



Low-Carb Diets Can Affect Thinking

Besides robbing the body of key nutrients, low-carb eating plans can also impact thinking ability, explains Bruce Rengers, PhD, assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics at Saint Louis University. When a body is robbed of carbohydrates, the body draws its energy from ketones, a byproduct that results from breaking down body fat.



This process explains some of the dramatic weight loss that can be achieved with eating plans that restrict carbohydrate intake. "But ketones have a dulling effect on the brain," he tells WebMD. "Low-carb diets work by fooling the body to think that it's starving."



"Essentially, this quasi-starvation mode is not good for alertness, and it's certainly not good for children," adds Carter. "While these diets do work in the short-term for adults and can result in weight loss, there are better ways for children to lose weight."



How? Obviously, it's a good idea to limit their intake of "bad" carbohydrates such as overly processed snack foods, soda, and other high-calorie, low-nutrient fare. Beyond that, there's no need to prepare separate meals for the young'uns -- even if you're following a low-carb eating plan.



Put Nutrition First

"Just make sure your children get the nutrients they need," she tells WebMD. "Make sure they drink milk with their dinner, even if you shouldn't have dairy with these eating plans. If you're having a hamburger without the bun, make sure they have theirs with lettuce and tomato. By all means, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are important for children -- even if you're restricting them in your own diet."



Low-carb regimens such as the Atkins and South Beach diets restrict the intake of certain fruits, vegetables, and grains. But Stephen Sondike, MD, a spokesman for Atkins Nutritionals and director of a pediatric obesity program at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, maintains that the low-carb approach is safe and effective for children who need to lose weight.



He points to research he conducted, published last March in the Journal of Pediatrics, comparing the Atkins approach against a low-fat diet in teenagers for 12 weeks. "We found kids on the Atkins approach lost twice as much weight as those on a low-fat diet," he says.



"We do support the use of fruits and vegetables," Sondike tells WebMD. "We just believe the American diet is much too high in high-glycemic carbohydrates. We feel by lowering the amounts of those foods in meal plans, that's going to make everyone healthier."



But among the high-glycemic foods encouraged to be eaten sparingly in the Atkins plan -- if at all -- are oranges, bananas, potatoes, and other foods considered to be a good source of nutrition by other experts. High-glycemic foods raise blood glucose level quickly, which can lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes.



Meanwhile, potato and citrus growers have recently launched marketing campaigns to tout the nutritional benefits of their foods, in part because sales have dwindled because of the low-carbohydrate craze. Pasta manufacturers are expected to follow suit.



Some of these foods are frequently consumed by endurance athletes such as marathon runners to improve their performance.



"Carbohydrate loading is used by endurance athletes for a good reason -- it gives their bodies an extra storage of fuel so their performance increases dramatically," says Jim Bell, president of the International Fitness Professionals Association and a member of Florida's state-run obesity task force. "In full-grown adults, we know that restricting carbohydrates cuts down on athletic performance and endurance."



While most children don't run marathons -- especially those who are overweight -- Bell says he's concerned that low-carb diets can hurt their efforts to lose weight the old-fashioned way, with exercise.



"Carbohydrates provide energy, and without this energy, they probably can't exercise as well," he tells WebMD. "What's worse, in children going through a development process, there can be permanent inhibition in their reaching full genetic potential when an entire group of macronutrients is eliminated from the diet. It doesn't matter if it is fat, protein, or carbohydrates, it's just not healthy."





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SOURCES: Joan Carter, RD, registered dietician, USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center; instructor of pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. Bruce Rengers, PhD, assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics, Saint Louis University Doisy School of Allied Health Professionals, St. Louis. Stephen Sondike, MD, spokesman, Atkins Nutritionals; director, Nutrition, Exercise, Weight Management program, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Jim Bell, president, International Fitness Professionals Association, Tampa, Fla.; member, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's Task Force on Obesity. Sondike, S, Journal of Pediatrics, March 2003; vol 142: pp 253-258.

My thought is for kids -- get rid of the simple sugary junky stuff. I switched my kids to Diet Rite and no longer bring regular soda into the house. When kids want fruit juice, I encourage them to eat a whole fruit.

I give my kids whole milk and encourage them to snack on cheese. When I buy packaged snacks, I try to find ones that have more protein.

I pick bread that has a little more fiber or whole grains. There is a lot of lc food that's good for everybody--nutrient dense is the key. I go for the natural peanut butter and low sugar (not sugar free, just less sugar) grape jelly.

I give my kids eggs and cheese toast or waffles for breakfast with a glass of milk and an orange if they want it.

Good call, BVTaylor. If I had children I would do the same.

I hate this pervasive idea that kids need Oreos and if the parents do not comply it's abuse. <sigh>

When I have kids, I've decided to much like BVTaylor does. However, I feel that if I keep high carb foods away from my kids constantly, they'll want it more and then when they get on their own... kinda binge.. kind of like a rebellious act saying, "I'm an adult now and can do what I want." Like when I got out on my own I stayed out late every single night because when I lived with my dad, he made me stick to a strict curfew all the time. Plus I bought all the foods that my dad wouldn't buy me.

So I say high-carb foods in moderation is good. Maybe a small portion every day, as their metabolisms are faster they can probably handle it. I just don't want them to get into adulthood, binge, and then ruin the work I did to make sure they didn't become obese children.

A particularly touchy subject for me... My mom fed me crap as a kid. I mean... like.. "Here honey, eat these 15 cookies." No exaggeration. She gave me junk all the time because she was big as a kid and she wanted me to go through what she did because it wouldn't be fair to her otherwise, in her mindset. She's a very psychologically messed up woman. But I refuse to let my children become overweight like I did.

I laughed really hard the other day.

My 4-year-old son, Andre, pointed to the nutrition label on the back of his soda and said, "Look, Mommy, no sugar!"

And then we went out to the store and I bought something that was low carb, and Andre started chastising me... "Mommy, this has sugar. It has one sugar."

My seven-year-old wants to know the number of grams of sugar in everything as well. He was drinking a Capri Sun after soccer (they load the kids with sugar after the games), and was appalled at the 25-odd grams of sugar. It's all relative, of course.

Both of my boys are mild ADHD, so steering them to less junk food helps their behavior, particularly no cereal for breakfast or they metamorph into little maniacs, but I will let them have cereal as a treat for dinner sometimes.

The good thing is, the boys LOVE the lower-carb choices that we have in our pantry. So long as they like the taste, I keep encouraging them to make better choices on their own.... they don't complain about the pb or jelly, for example... but I try to keep different types of choices on hand that they like. For example, they love cheese, cheese crackers, and fresh fruit, so it's no hardship to get them to eat it, and they don't feel deprived by drinking diet soda (it really makes no difference to them), in fact they actually LIKE it.

There was an article floating about the net, I don't quite recall where, that was an ABC of how to feed your kid low-carb. The author claimed that if you keep sugar away from your kid as they are growing up, they won't develop a taste for it later. It made sense to me

I agree that there is no call to restrict kids to a very low carbohydrate diet, unless they are obese. But I don't think they would be harmed by one in any way. The body simply does not need carbohydrates to function. The human body, over time, developped a tolerance for it, that's all. We tolerate carbs, some more so than others but we don't need it.

In fact, I believe that a high carb diet does a lot more to hurt a kid than a low-carb one. A too-typical kid's diet is composed of sugared cereal, chocolate milk, fruit juices, pop, white bread, peanut butters loaded with sugar and trans fat, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, fries and the more than occasional trip to MacDonald. It's deficient in protein, good fats and fruits and vegetable. Kids fed that way often won't touch a vegetable with a 10 feet pole and consider fruit to be a pop tart.

So in what kind of dream world are they living in when they say low-carb is bad for kids. A world where mothers feed their kids loads of fruits, vegetables, legumes and minimaly processed carb ? Kids that are fed that way don't have a problem to begin with and don't need low-carb. It's the other 95% of the population that could benefit from low(er)-carb. Of course if they probably still think low-carb is a 5 egg omelet with a lb of bacon and melted fat on the side, I would agree that low-carb is bad for kids.