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 To study what's known as eating in the absence of hunger,
researchers tracked how many sweet and salty snacks children ate
just after finishing a full meal.
Children who ate the most sweets after the meal and threw the
biggest tantrums when the treats were taken away had greater odds of
gaining excess weight than kids who grazed on salty foods or didn't
put up a fuss when their snack was removed, the study found.
Biology may be to blame because none of the differences in family or
household characteristics explained why only some children craved
sugar, said senior study author Dr. Julie Lumeng, a developmental
and behavioral pediatrician at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“This behavior is probably inborn,” Lumeng said by email.
“Our study suggests that those kids who particularly like sweets are
at greater risk of weight gain,” Lumeng said. “Depending on the
child, some families may need to be more vigilant than others about
keeping sweets out of the house and limiting how easily accessible
they are.”
Lumeng and colleagues did food experiments with about 200 children
at ages 21, 27 and 33 months.
All were from low-income families receiving subsidies for health
care, food and early childhood education services.
For the experiment, researchers asked the kids’ mothers to feed them
a typical lunch. When they were done, researchers put down a plate
with two Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies, two Oreos, five frosted
Keebler animal cookies, two rainbow candy blast Chips Ahoy cookies,
two Keebler fudge stripe chocolate-coated cookies, 10 Pringles
potato chips and 10 Frito-Lay Cheetos cheese puffs.
Kids sat with the snack plate for 10 minutes and ate whatever they
liked. Then, researchers took it away, noted how children reacted to
the removal, and then weighed what was left to determine exactly how
much the kids ate.
The children who consumed more total calories and more sweets at 27
months were more likely to be heavier than the average child at age
33 months, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.
Boys, older children and kids with more educated mothers were more
likely to snack after the meal, the study also found.
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Because the study was done in children’s homes, differences in the
kids’ lunches may have influenced the results, the authors note. But
doing the experiment this way also means the results may more
closely resemble what would happen in the real world.
While the study only included low-income families, the findings
mirror results from other research that linked eating sweets after
meals to obesity in wealthier households, Lumeng said.
Poverty still might influence snacking habits, especially for kids
who don’t always get enough to eat or have inconsistent access to
healthy foods, said Dr. Lenna Liu, a pediatrician at the University
of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children’s Hospital who
wasn’t involved in the study.
Regardless of income levels, children with unpredictable meal
schedules or frequently skipped meals may eat when they’re not
hungry to compensate for uncertainty about when they will eat again,
Liu said by email.
Sweets, too, are the one type of food that even picky eaters don’t
fear trying, Liu added.
To combat mindless snacking, parents need establish a predictable
meal schedule and offer a variety of healthy foods.
“Limit, but do not overly restrict sweet foods,” Liu said. “In
particular, limit sugar-sweetened beverages such as soda or juice –
have them drink water or lowfat milk.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1rapzkb Pediatrics, online April 18, 2016.
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