Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Sleep-Deprived Teens At-Risk for Obesity

The more studies on teens and sleep that are released, the more we learn about the risks to teens when they are sleep-deprived. The latest study adds the risk of obesity to the already established links of teen sleep-deprivation to depression, high blood pressure, poor grades, poor mental alertness, and automobile accidents. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to reducing risks...more sleep.

Teens who sleep less than eight hours a night are more likely to eat a high-fat diet that puts them at risk for obesity and the many health problems connected with it, new research shows.

The study, published in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Sleep, found that these sleep-deprived teens consumed 2.2 percent more calories from fat, and ate more snacks than those who slept eight hours or more a night. They also ate more total calories.

"There's been a lot of research over the last five years implicating insufficient sleep with obesity," said study author Dr. Susan Redline, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "Some experimental studies on sleep deprivation in controlled laboratory environments show a craving for fatty foods among the participants" who got less sleep, she said.

Redline, a professor of medicine with the school's division of sleep medicine, said sleep-deprived teens may suffer from metabolic disturbances that have been linked to obesity and insulin resistance in other research with shift workers whose sleep was also irregular.

In addition to being a possible cause of metabolic problems, fewer hours of sleep provided teens with "more opportunities to eat," Redline said.

Teens need about nine hours of sleep every night to feel rested and alert the next day, but few teens get that amount, experts said.

Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/642649.html

Dorm With Cafeteria May Boost College Weight Gain

College students who live in dormitories with dining halls gain more weight than students who have to walk farther for their meals, a new study has found.

The study included 388 freshmen in seven dorms, including four that had on-site dining halls that served three meals daily. All the students had access to two campus gyms with state-of-the-art exercise equipment.

During the school year, females in dorms with on-site dining halls weighed almost 2 pounds more and exercised 1.43 fewer times per week than those in dorms without dining halls. Males in dorms with on-site dining halls ate about 1.5 more meals and almost three more snacks per week than those in dorms without dining halls, according to the report released online Aug. 3 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/641528.html

Energy Drinks Pose Serious Health Risk to Kids

A critical editorial published by Canada’s leading medical journal is the latest move a mounting effort to convince the Canadian government to crack down on the sale of caffeinated energy drinks to minors.

Energy drinks that contain high amounts of caffeine – some more than five times the amount in a can of cola, or nearly double the amount in a cup of brewed coffee – can pose serious health risks to children and adolescents and require stronger warning labels, according to the Canadian Medical Association Journal’s editorial.

Chris Turner, Health Canada’s director-general of the marketed health products directorate, said the department has received several dozen reports of adverse reactions linked to energy drinks, and that 15 of them were cardiac events.

Unlike cola drinks or similar carbonated beverages, energy drinks usually contain much higher levels of caffeine. For instance, a 250-ml (approx. 8 oz.) bottle of Coca-Cola contains 26 milligrams of caffeine, according to the company’s web site. But a 75-ml (approx. 2.5 oz.) bottle of Rockstar “energy shot” contains 200 mg of caffeine. A 355-ml (approx. 12 oz.) can of Red Bull contains 113.6 mg of caffeine.

Excessive caffeine consumption can lead to irritability, loss of sleep or nervousness. But there is also concern that its stimulating effects can cause rapid heat rate, an abnormal rhythm or other problems that could have serious health consequences.

Source: The Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/energy-drinks-pose-serious-health-risk-to-kids-canadian-medical-journal/article1652080/

Teenage Boys Really Do Eat A Lot

In a lunch-buffet experiment involving 200 kids ages 8 to 17, researchers found that boys routinely ate more compared with girls their own age. But boys in their mid-teens were the most ravenous of all -- downing an average of nearly 2,000 lunchtime calories.

The pattern makes sense, given that boys usually hit their growth spurt -- putting on height and muscle mass -- in late puberty, according to senior researcher Dr. Jack A. Yanovski, of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Yet, while teenage boys have a storied reputation for packing it away, there had actually been little objective evidence that this is the norm.

"There's a lot of folk wisdom that says boys can eat prodigious amounts, but we haven't had much data," Yanovski told Reuters Health.

To fill the gap, he and his colleagues had 204 8- to 17-year-old boys and girls come to a lunch buffet on two separate days. On one day, the kids were instructed to eat as much as they normally would during lunch; on the other day, they were told to eat as much as they wanted.

Overall, the researchers found, boys ate more than girls did at each stage of puberty. Prepubescent boys -- generally between the ages of 8 and 10 -- averaged nearly 1,300 lunchtime calories, versus 900 among prepubescent girls.

Girls showed the biggest increase in appetite during early- to mid-puberty, roughly between the ages of 10 and 13. Girls that age averaged almost 1,300 lunchtime calories, and that figure was only slightly higher among girls who were in late puberty.

Boys, on the other hand, tend to develop later. And their calorie needs appear to shoot up significantly in late puberty, or between the ages of 14 and 17.

While boys in this study showed little change in calorie intake between pre- and mid-puberty, their average lunchtime calorie intake reached nearly 2,000 calories in late puberty. And as long as their teenage sons are healthy and normal-weight, a sudden surge in eating should not be alarming, according to the researcher.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65E3ZA20100615

CDC Study: 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Results

Since 1991, The U.S. Center for Disease Control has surveyed teens every two years in order to identify trends in risky adolescent behaviors. The results of the 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey have just been released.

First, let's look at the percentages on some of the areas surveyed:

• Have had at least one drink of alcohol (during their life): 72.5%, down from 75% in 2007.
• Have had at least one drink within 30 days of the survey: 41.8%, down from 44.7% in 2007.
• Have had five or more drinks within a few hours, within 30 days of survey: 24.2%, down from 26% in '07.

• Have used marijuana at least once (during their life): 36.8%, down from 38.1% in 2007.
• Have used marijuana at least once within 30 days of the survey: 20.8%, up from 19.7% in 2007.

• Have tried cigarette smoking (during their life): 46.3%, down from 50.3% in 2007.
• Have smoked cigarettes at least once within 30 days of the survey: 19.5%, down from 20% in 2007.

• Have had sexual intercourse (during their life): 46%, down from 47.8% in 2007.
• Have had sexual intercourse with 4 or more persons (during their life): 13.8%, down from 14.9% in '07.
• Have had sexual intercourse within 30 days of the survey: 34.2%, down from 35% in 2007.
• Drank alcohol or used drugs before last sexual intercourse: 61.1%, down from 61.5% in 2007.

• Seriously considered attempting suicide during 12 months before survey: 13.8%, down from 14.5% in '07.
• Made a plan about how they would attempt suicide during 12 mos before survey: 10.9% down from 11.3% in '07.
• Attempted suicide during 12 mos before survey: 6.3%, down from 6.9% in 2007.

• Rarely or never wore a seat belt: 9.7%, down from 11.1% in 2007.
• Rode with a driver who had been drinking within 30 days of survey: 28.3%, down from 29.1% in 2007.
• Drove when drinking alcohol within 30 days of survey: 9.7%, down from 10.5% in 2007.

While on the surface it appears that there are broad, although slight decreases in at-risk behaviors, the study indicates that in terms of trends, most changes are statistically insignificant, amounting to "no change." The areas noted above where changes in trends were indicated were:

• Have had at least one drink within 30 days of the survey - decrease
• Have tried cigarette smoking (during their life) - decrease

To view the extensive overview of the report, click the source link below.

Source: CDC
http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/yrbs/pdf/us_overview_yrbs.pdf

Kids Pack On The Calories With Frequent, Unhealthy Snacks

Children today snack an average of three times a day, and they are mostly consuming sugary beverages, cookies, cake, candy, salty snacks and other high-calorie junk food, a new study shows.

In fact, children are now consuming 168 more calories from snacks than kids did in 1977, the research shows.

The findings confirm previous studies that indicate snacking may have run amok in the USA, and it may be contributing to the rising rates of childhood obesity.

"Today we think we need to be eating all the time, so we have snack foods available for our kids constantly," says Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina. "Kids are not only snacking too often, but essentially the foods they are consuming represent almost completely unhealthy foods."

He and his colleagues analyzed government data on the eating habits of more than 31,000 children, ages 2 to 18, from 1977 to 2006. Their findings, which are reported in the March Health Affairs, show that children are consuming:

•About 586 calories a day from snacks, compared with 418 calories from snacks in 1977.

•An average of 2,111 calories for the entire day, up from 2,000 in 1977.

•A greater percentage of their snack foods from sweetened beverages, juice, salty foods, candy and cereal than kids did in 1977.

•A smaller percentage of their snacks from milk and other dairy products than kids in 1977.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2010-03-02-snacking02_ST_N.htm

New Study: Teen Obesity Caused By Eating Too Much Food

I kid you not.

The new study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was conducted to investigate the role of exercise in teen obesity. The researchers found that the amount of teen exercise has remained stable over the past two decades, and thus concluded that the lack of exercise hasn't been the cause of the increase of obesity. Food consumption is the culprit. Except when you also take into account that the study found in 2007, only 34.7% of teens met federal physical activity recommendations, which call for activity strenuous enough to cause heavy breathing for a total of an hour a day for five or more days a week.

So, the study suggests that increased food consumption and lack of adequate exercise might both interact to contribute to teen obesity.

Wow. Aren't you glad we have scientific research to explain this?

It's no surprise that obesity rates among U.S. youngsters have skyrocketed, tripling from 1976 to 2004. Public-health experts and obesity researchers attribute the trend in part to kids' increasingly sedentary lifestyles. As teens spend more and more time anchored before a screen — burning fewer and fewer calories each day — they're storing more of that unused energy as fat. Hence, the ballooning rates of obesity.

That's precisely why the findings of a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health came as such a surprise. The report, published last week in the journal Obesity Reviews, finds that the amount of physical activity among U.S. teens has not in fact changed significantly over the past two decades, even while that population has gotten heavier. "On the one hand, we have seen the obesity-prevalence increase, but we don't see a decrease in physical activity," says Dr. Youfa Wang, an associate professor at the Center for Human Nutrition at Hopkins and lead author of the study. "This suggests that physical activity is not a good explanation for the increase in prevalence of obesity."

In simple terms, body weight is a reflection of the balance between two variables: the calories a body takes in and the calories it burns off. As far as the average U.S. teen is concerned, the study suggests, the culprit behind weight gain is not a decrease in exercise but an increase in consumption. Of course, that doesn't mean teens are getting adequate exercise: Wang analyzed data from nearly 16,000 high school students between the ages of 15 and 18, who took part in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's longitudinal Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, about their physical activity. He and his team found that in 2007, only 34.7% of teens met federal physical activity recommendations, which call for activity strenuous enough to cause heavy breathing for a total of an hour a day for five or more days a week.

But the survey also found that teens' overall rate of daily exercise had not changed much since 1991, when the study sample was first asked to report their participation in gym classes in school and their level of physical activity at home.

So does this mean that exercise isn't important in controlling weight? As tempting as that conclusion might be, Wang and other health experts say that's not exactly what the new data show. The findings may say less about the role of exercise by itself than about the other variable in the weight equation — diet — and the interaction of the two.

Source: Time
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1936777,00.html

Teenage Girls 'Living on One Meal a Day'

Teenage girls are regularly skipping up to two meals a day because they think they are overweight, according to a new UK survey examining children's lives.

One in 10 girls aged 14 and 15 often go without both breakfast and lunch, the poll found.

A quarter (26 per cent) of them frequently skip breakfast and 22 per cent routinely pass on lunch.

The survey, by the UK Schools Health Education Unit, also found that most teenage girls believe they are overweight, even when they are not.

Even among younger girls, those aged 10 and 11, 40 per cent thought they needed to lose weight.
Breakfast appears to be the meal that is most often missed, despite the old adage that it is the most important meal in the day.

While 26 per cent of 14 and 15-year-old girls said they often missed it, the problem appears to start at a younger age, with 20 per cent of 12 and 13-year-olds going without, and seven per cent of 10 and 11-year-olds.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6313715/Teenage-girls-living-on-one-meal-a-day.html

Will "Blow" Become Trendy?

Gee, look what some marketers have come up with for the latest energy drink being promoted on social networking sites popular with teens.

If it looks like cocaine, is packaged like cocaine, and causes the user to feel strange and energized like cocaine, is it cocaine? No, it's the latest energy drink called Blow and it's quickly causing controversy.

The energy drink mix, which is sold in a small vial, is measured in grams, just like the actual drug. As if that weren't enough, a small mirror is also included in the package so the energy deprived can grind the rocks into a fine powder.

Pour the Blow in your water bottle and you'll be flying high on caffeine. One vial contains 240mg of caffeine and 200mg of Taurine, which is equivalent to 2 Red Bulls and 3 cups of coffee. Essentially it's an all-nighter in a small and convenient package.

However, experts are concerned that this may be too much for the average person to handle. It is still unclear how this new product will affect different individuals. While it may provide energy for some, others could get sick. One of the main concerns is its potential effect on children and pregnant women.

While the manufacturer says that only those 18 and older are allowed to buy Blow, the website where the product is sold does not enforce age restrictions. Furthermore, the creators of Blow are utilizing social networking sites that are popular with teens, such as MySpace and YouTube, as a key component in their marketing and publicity strategy.

Source: NBC Los Angeles
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/health/Is-Blow-the-Latest-Trend-63322917.html

Kids Eating Better at Fast Food Restaurants

New data from Chicago market research firm NPD Group suggests that the eating habits of American children while at fast food restaurants are changing for the better.

Chicken nuggets, burgers, fries and colas remain popular with the under-13 set, of course. But consumption of these foods at restaurants is declining, while soup, yogurt, fruit, grilled chicken and chocolate milk are on the rise.

The new data suggest that a number of factors, from the economic downturn to new offerings from fast-food giants, may be influencing a general shift in eating preferences among children.

Among the losers in the year ending March 31 were colas (down 10 percent), chicken nuggets and strips (8 percent), French fries (7 percent) and hot dogs (6 percent). Winners included soup (29 percent), grilled chicken sandwiches (26 percent), yogurt (21 percent), carrots (9 percent) and fruit (6 percent).

Even pizza is losing favor. While it is still the most popular food for children in quick-service restaurants, its year-to-year growth is flat, according to NPD. And in full-service restaurants, it has been replaced by pasta as the most popular food among children.

Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/health/16well.html?_r=1&ref=science