100 calories a day over a year is 36500 calories - from memory its about 3500 calories to make a pound of fat, so that would be over 10 pounds a year.
It would make quite a difference to the outcome over time, we already know that comparatively small amounts extra can add up a lot over time, ie it doesnt have to be about eating a pizza extra a day.
Im not an expert in this area, but its issues like this that mean Id want to see the response to the study before taking it too much on board.
Otara
Because calling that “guessing” is a highly inaccurate statement that evinces a lack of understanding of how the tool works and attempts to substitute snark for debate. Honestly accepting that the method may indeed have limitations in this context that may lessen the strength of its conclusion, despite the implied claim of the study’s lead author that it is as reliable in the obese as it is in healthy weight individuals, if that’s what the data shows, well, that is how science works.
Cite?
I think it’s highly possible that the “crossover” age is roughly the time the child becomes aware that it is overweight and that eating a lot when you’re fat is a social disgrace. In other words, the change came when the kids reached an age when they were capable of being embarrassed enough to lie about what they were eating.
Certainly in my life the single greatest cause of the lies I’ve told has been embarrassment. I don’t think I’m all that unusual in that way. I was certainly capable of embarrassment as a child, and almost certainly would have lied to my parents and the testers about any secret snacking I’d been doing.
Just a thought.
Not at all. I’m just reinforcing what I’ve said from the very start of this thread and you’re now agreeing with: the data isn’t as concrete as the study authors would have us believe. An educated guess is still a guess.
I agree. I hate studies like this. What the hell is the question they’re even asking? If the question is, whether or not kids have different metabolic rates, they have to eat EXACTLY the same shit every day. Prepackaged foods. Then someone would have to monitor their activity levels. Otherwise, this study was a complete waste of time and money.
The question is simply how many calories kids who are overweight consume vs. kids with a normal rate. (I haven’t seen the actual abstract, so I can’t be more specific than that.)
A big part of my job is teaching med students and residents to interpret studies and extract useful clinical information from them. A big part of that time is spent teaching them to identify confounding factors, because every study has them. Most of the time they don’t invalidate a study, but you have to interpret the study’s conclusions with them in mind.
It’s correct that the self-reporting of diets is a potential confounding factor here, but the tool used to collect those self-reports has been studied and found to be reliable. I’m also not sure there’s a better way to measure real-world calorie consumption; the alternative is watching the subject in real time and counting the calories as they go, which is definitely going to change behavior.
The study is not meant to make a grand, sweeping statement, because no study is. Studies are designed to answer particular questions. This study shouldn’t make us drop everything that we’re doing and change the whole focus of our efforts to combat childhood obesity, but it supports the idea that it’s a bit more complicated than “too much pie, that’s your problem”.
I’d like to say well done to all the posters in this thread who are taking the subject seriously and aren’t using the topic to make fun of fat kids, something we should all support. They’ve got enough on their plates already without people making fun of them.
No matter where you stand on the issue of reported calories, I can’t help but think that the intake for kids is far less relevant than the output.
When I was an 11-year-old boy I thought nothing of riding my bike 30 minutes to a friend’s place to go play tennis for an hour and a half and then ride home and then that evening maybe I’d go play baseball. A diet of 2,000 calories sounds LOW, if anything; I ate like the world was running out of food. 2000 is obscene? Shit, I bet I was putting away 2500-3000 calories a day and I was as thin as a rail. I ate more calories at that age than I do now as a 38-year-old man (admittedly, I’m currently on a weight loss kick, but even in the long term I won’t be eating more than 2000-2200 or so in an average day.)
I suspect children can burn off high calorie diets with relative ease - relative to adults, that is. My admittedly limited-understanding belief is that for kids, exercise is more important than diet; as one ages, that reverses.
So, actually, while the study doesn’t really prove fat kids eat less, I think it’s a perfectly valid hypothesis. The activity levels of children can vary enormously, and calories burned by a normal kid are at levels that would practically kill most adults. I can very much believe that for many fat kids the problem is not that they’re eating too many Big Macs - because the skinny kids are chomping down Big Macs, too - but that they’re not exercising.
:smack:
The amount one needs to eat varies depending on how active one is. My own 4 year old is a freaking ball of energy - what he eats, he converts into running around. He’s active pretty well from the moment he gets up to the moment he’s asleep. If a kid sat on his ass watching TV all day, he could eat the same or less and still get fat.
Yes, the activity issue is key. Without considering information on that, it is impossible to reach a conculsion.
Also, I suggest that many overweight kids have their caloric intake restricted by a certain age (all their food comes, at these young ages, from parents or school) BECAUSE they are overweight. So that might be another factor at play that is not being taken into account.
And all calories are not equal. (this may be a controversal proposal, but I make it anyway). A child consuming 2000 cals. in the form of refined, processed, sugared, high sat./trans. fat foods will tend to gain more weight than a child consuming 2000 cals. of whole grains, fruits and veggies, and low sat./trans fat fare.
There is also a great deal of data which suggests that feeding patterns in infancy can predispose a child/adult to obesity. Breastfeeding, both due to composition of the milk and on-demand feeding patterns is correlated with healthier (lower) weight later in life. Formula feeding is strongly correlated with later weight issues, both due to composition (the second ingredient in many formulas if HF corn syrup, the first is cow milk, which has a very different nutritional profile than human milk, with more sat. fat, choles., protein, etc..) and a tendency towards a less infant initiated feeding dynamic.
The fat cells which form early in life never go away. They simply shrink or grow.
Ultimately, it is obvious that, genetic differences aside, most kids in the US are “fat” because of WHAT they eat, how MUCH of it they eat, and how much or little exercise they get. All are factors. Can’t really draw any sound conclusions from the limited data given here.
:smack: