Young Children Served Large Portions May Overeat

Researchers found that super-sizing preschoolers' entrees generally led the children to take bigger bites and consume more calories. But when kids were allowed to serve themselves, they naturally selected more age-appropriate portions.

"Given the alarming and growing problem of child obesity, the capacity of large portions to encourage overeating among young children is concerning," study author Dr. Jennifer Orlet Fisher told Reuters Health.

"The results of the study imply that minimizing children's exposure to excessive portions may prevent overeating," said Fisher, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

One recent study found that meal portion sizes in the home and restaurants have jumped since the late 1970s in the U.S.

In the current study, Fisher and her team studied 30 preschool-aged children.

During two series of lunches the children were served either an age-appropriate portion of a macaroni-and-cheese entrée or a portion twice as large.

The researchers found that, overall, the children ate about 25 percent more of the entrée when they were served a larger portion than when they were served an age-appropriate amount.

Children took bigger bites when presented with the bigger entrée and did not compensate by eating significantly less of the other foods served with it, Fisher and her colleagues report. The children's overall calorie intake at lunch was 15 percent higher when served the large entrée.

In addition, the children's bite size increased along with increasing body mass index, a measure of a person's weight in relation to their height.

In another part of the study the children were allowed to serve themselves from bowls containing individual servings of the larger portion sizes. They were told to eat as little or as much as they wanted.

This time, the children did not overeat, the researchers found. They instead chose smaller portions and ate less than when they were served the larger portion size.

In light of the findings, Fisher suggested that children be served or encouraged to select "small 'first portions' with additional helpings if (they) are still hungry."

"Also avoid the temptation of 'super-sizing"' when eating out, she added. "Such deals appear not to represent a good value for health."

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2003;77:1164-1170.

Full-Term Fetus Knows Mom's Voice

U.S. researchers found that heart rate in full-term fetuses increased when a recording of their mothers' voices was played, but decreased in response to the voice of a female stranger.

This shows that the fetus can distinguish between the voices of its mother and other women before it is even born, study author Dr. Barbara S. Kisilevsky of Queen's University in Canada told Reuters Health.

"It is not the increased heart rate per se, but the different ways in which the fetuses responded to the two voices ... that tells us that the fetus had to recognize its own mother's voice," she said. "If not, then the response to both voices would have been the same."

These results add to a body of research suggesting that biology prepares the fetus to bond to its mother after birth and take on the daunting task of learning language, Kisilevsky noted.

Furthermore, showing that a fetus can distinguish its mother's voice adds credence to the theory that both genes and experience help a fetus understand speech, because the tendency to respond differently to different voices "had to occur through experience," Kisilevsky said.

During the study, reported in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science, Kisilevsky and her colleagues played a tape recording through speakers held around 10 centimeters over the mothers' abdomens.

The tapes consisted of two minutes of silence followed by two minutes of either the mother or a female stranger reading the same poem, then two more minutes of silence.

On average, the fetuses had spent about 38 weeks in the womb, and so were full-term. Thirty fetuses were exposed to tapes of their mothers speaking, and another 30 the voices of a female stranger.

Although mothers' voices did not appear to elicit significantly more body movement in the fetuses than did the voices of female strangers, fetal heart rate increased when listening to their mothers, and appeared to decrease in response to a recording of a female stranger.

In terms of why a stranger's voice might lower a fetus's heart rate, Kisilevsky said that a decrease in heart rate is often a sign of attention, and the fetus may have paid more attention to a voice it didn't recognize.

"I think it already knew its mother's voice, and was now learning about other voices," she said.

SOURCE: Psychological Science 2003;14:220-224.

Youthful Hostility Linked to Adult Heart Disease

"There is a need for interventions designed to reduce hostility in young people to prevent the precursors to cardiovascular disease, like obesity or type II diabetes, which has become a huge health problem in children in the U.S.," the study's lead author, Dr. Karen A. Matthews of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

Parents, Matthews told Reuters Health, should try to address any conflicts their children might be having in order to ease hostile feelings.

Among the children and teens her team studied, the researchers found that anger, cynicism and aggression were associated with several cardiovascular risk factors, including obesity, high blood pressure and a condition called insulin resistance that can be a precursor to type 2 diabetes.

Such chronic conditions -- grouped together under the heading of "metabolic syndrome" -- have been shown to promote cardiovascular disease, the researchers note.

Matthews and her colleagues examined 134 children and adolescents in the Pittsburgh area who had no history of heart disease, mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse. The children were between the ages of 8 and 10, while the adolescents were between 15 and 17. The participants were divided roughly equally between male and female, and black and white.

Blood samples -- to assess the presence of the metabolic syndrome factors -- were drawn at the start of the study, and then again three years later. The children also underwent psychological testing to measure hostility levels.

Children and adolescents who had a clean bill of health at the start of the study but who had high hostility levels were more likely than other children to develop at least two components of the metabolic syndrome during the next three years, the researchers found.

Hostility was most strongly associated with the later development of obesity and insulin resistance, Matthews and her team report in the May issue of Health Psychology.

The researchers stress that the study did not explore all the variables that might contribute to hostile attitudes or to the development of the metabolic syndrome among young people.

For example, they suggest that future studies might focus on the role played by hormonal changes during puberty. They also note that diet, unhealthy lifestyle, stress and poverty might all have an impact on the association between hostility and heart disease.

Still, the authors conclude that taking steps to reduce kids' hostility -- in conjunction with promoting other lifestyle changes -- might end up reducing the risk of future heart disease.

"Parents can encourage their children to avoid over-eating (and to) exercise, and discuss areas of conflict as a way to prevent the development of the metabolic syndrome," Matthews told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: Health Psychology 2003;22:279- 286.

Coffee Shop Workers Have High Blood Pressure Risk

In a small study, the researchers found that long-time workers in coffee shops located on a campus were more likely to have high blood pressure than their peers. They found that 18 percent of workers under age 30 and 41 percent of those over age 30 had high blood pressure, as did 48 percent of workers who were in the occupation for more than five years.

"It is alarming that the people in charge of alimentation in the university suffer a high prevalence of high blood pressure and elevated risk for cardiovascular disease, which means that the students are certainly at high risk for suffering the same consequences," said Dr. Napoleon Gabriel Macias.

Macias, along with colleagues at Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, measured the blood pressures of 64 workers at six different coffee shops on the school campus.

"People who have worked for many years at a coffee shop having this unhealthy nutrition have more pronounced high blood pressure because they have been exposed to the risk factors for more time," said Macias.

Macias and his colleagues recommend that schools and universities incorporate nutritional education into job training. He says schools should create menus under a nutritionist's supervision to help employees and students eat a balanced diet and lower their risks for cardiovascular disease.

The findings were presented recently at a meeting of the Inter-American Society of Hypertension in San Antonio, Texas.

FDA Urged to Limit Acrylamide Levels in Food

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), best known for its damning nutritional assessments of pizza, Chinese food and movie popcorn, said that acrylamide in foods may be causing as many as several thousand cancers a year in the U.S.

Acrylamide first came to public notice last April, when a group of Swedish researchers contended that the substance formed when foods were fried, baked or roasted at high temperatures, and was likely responsible for causing thousands of cancers.

Washington D.C.-based CSPI is urging the FDA to require manufacturers to meet temporary acceptable levels of acrylamide in food, at least until more is known about the substance. CSPI executive director Michael Jacobsen noted that German authorities are already urging companies to stop marketing foods with high acrylamide content.

Since last April, scientists have learned how acrylamide is formed. It was already known that high levels of exposure can cause neurological problems and cancer in animals. But researchers still do not know what constitutes a safe or acceptable level of acrylamide in people.

Jacobsen said, however, "There is no safe level."

"When it comes to carcinogens, the less, the better," he added.

His nonprofit group is urging Americans to eat less of the "non-nutritious" foods that have been found to have high acrylamide levels, such as potato chips, French fries, baked goods, pastries and coffee. Jacobsen said consumers should not be as worried about nutritious foods, such as cereals and whole grain breads, which have also been found to have acrylamide.

Those foods have far less of the substance and make up a much smaller proportion of the average American's diet, said Jacobsen. According to FDA data cited by CSPI, Pringles BBQ Sweet Mesquite Flavored Potato Crisps, for instance, contain 2,510 parts per billion of acrylamides, compared to 102 parts per billion for Arnold Bakery Light 100 percent whole wheat bread.

Food manufacturers have been conducting their own tests to see how much acrylamide is in food and how to reduce or eliminate them. Jacobsen contended that manufacturers can reduce levels of the substance by changing the variety of potato or other food used, preparing ingredients differently before cooking, or cooking at a lower temperature or for a shorter time.

He lauded the food industry and the FDA for "taking the acrylamide issue very seriously." But, said Jacobsen, since it takes years for the agency to institute new rules or policies, it should take steps toward limiting acrylamide levels before all of the scientific research is complete.

Rick Jarman, vice president for regulatory affairs at the National Food Processors Association, said that while acrylamide is a known neurotoxin and carcinogen, it's not clear if it is at the levels found in food.

"We don't know the significance of these numbers," said Jarman. The industry is working with the FDA "to get firm answers and not just speculation," he told Reuters Health.

A study conducted by scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden -- the first to look at acrylamide in terms of human diet and cancer risk -- suggested it may not be as dangerous as people have been led to believe. Those findings were published in January.

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