NEWS: Obesity Increasing in Toddlers

CULTURE: Obesity Increasing in Toddlers

A report from the American Heart Association has found that ten percent of children between two and five are obese. The findings from the A.H.A. seem to find a correlation between an ever increasing rate of adult obesity and preschoolers.

Doctors believe that the cases of diabetes, stroke, and heart disease will “skyrocket in 10 to 30 years.”

I worry about the number of people who will develop eating disorders by the time they’re in kindergarten, have horrendous body image issues, and never develop a notion of eating healthy because they are always on “a diet.”

It's MSG's fault. Causes lesions on the hypothalamus, and thus obesity. In labs, if they need obese mice to study, they feed them food with MSG/free glutamate.

It's so disturbing. And it's not just in junk food.

There is this commercial on right now for baby formula, going on and on about "comfort proteins" that are broken down to make it "easy for baby to digest". Yeah, that's MSG. Free glutamate. It's comforting because it acts like valium once absorbed, and completely addictive. Gotta hook 'em young. Too bad glutamate levels are absolutely crucial during early development and if you introduce tons excess of excitotoxins from an outside source (food) your neurons will grow all haywacky and stay that way. Yeah, it also crosses the placental barrier, so whatever mommy's eating will effect them in the womb, too.

So so sad

You wouldnt happen to have studies or a link on that would you? Just curious.

Really, the best is a book by Dr. Russel Blaylock, _Excitotoxins_.

For general anti-MSG things:

www.msgfree.org particularly the discussion area
www.msgmyth.com
www.truthinlabeling.org has the best medical explainations/links to studies/references
www.msgfacts.net

There are lots of different studies: Most I could give you are in medical journals etc, through my library, and you need to subscribe and all of that. And, they're not written for laymen (not to presume you don't know much about it, but..you get the idea)

while msg is certainly part of the problem, you cant ignore the role of other foods and their ingredients. this type of problem cannot be solely the fault of one amino acid added to food products; its clearly a systemic problem, and msg is simply one part of that.

i didnt read any replies, but its because people hear the baby cry and then shove a bottle or food in its mouth..

sad, but true.

Let us not forget fast food and some parents' increasing dependence on it. Fast food is oh so convenient for busy families and now we are seeing the consequences.

Of course.

Also, to clarify: I simply say "MSG" out of convenience: It goes under other names, and there are a whole group of other amino acids that are excitotoxic (aspartame, lysine, etc), which I also refer to.
And there are other complexities: The lack of antioxidants and other things like Taurine that combat the negative effects of MSG..

Also, one thing that I have wondered about is that maybe a lot of our eating habits are meant to be a quick fix to some of the symptoms of excitotoxicity. For instance, eating 2 tablespoons of sugar has been shown to decrease absorbtion of free glutamate. Also, we may feel some immediate benefit to eating very sugary things because.. Well, there are glutamate receptors in the pancreas, which become overexcited, causing us to become hypoglycemic (also, there are other forces at play in this end result, but they're more complicated and this sentence is already way too long ).. You can imagine the possible corrolations to diabetes in this, as well. Also, caffeine has seemed to help me with my MSG sensitivity, and I have my own hypothesis about that.. I haven't seen any studies about that in particular, so I'll keep my speculations to myself.

Certainly, there are always other reasons.. People were obese before MSG became mass-produced. I am just saying, that there has been some major change in the past 60 years (which, incidentally, is about when MSG became a part of the American diet), and it may be a major catalyst/cause, more than people tend to think.

this really is a sedate culture we live in.

everything can be done sitting down with no wires. kids just dont want to go outside and play.

i thank God that i grew up in rural england and my parents didnt buy me a sega!

There's a _lot_ more to it than MSG. As bad as that stuff may or may not be, it's way down on the list of Shit Americans Do Wrong With Their Diets. I mean look at Japan, if ever there were a group of people that lace everything with MSG it's them, and they are slim and have one of the longest life expectancies on earth.

How about the fact that Americans don't fucking move? Ever? Or get the bulk of their calories from refined carbohydrates (white flour and sugar)? Believe limiting dietary fat is healthy? Use hydrogenated oils? Don't eat plants?

Pretty much everything is wrong with the average American diet, so it seems silly to point out one additive or even a small handful of things... If people were eating awesome diets to begin with, exercising like crazy, and just sprinkling on a little MSG here and there, it would be one thing, but we're not even close.

Nick

i have read other places that glutamate in excess can cause weight loss. glutamate does lots of things but causing brain damage isn't one of them, unless you're on a constant IV of spoonfuls upon spoonfuls of the stuff. if MSG makes you fat, why do china and japan, both who consume far more msg and other EAAs [excitatory amino acids] per capita than americans do have a fraction of the obesity rates as the US? free access to calorie-dense, nutrient-light, highly-processed junk food that's marketed to people as soon as they pop out of the womb is a big part of the problem. go to bed-stuy or western kentucky and you'll find that it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to live off of fried chicken and convenience store junk food than it is to find fresh fruits or vegetables beyond a few overripe apples or bananas. sprawling development that makes it hard to walk from point a to point b makes people fatter too - compare obesity rates in manhattan and houston. then there's increasing workloads + single-parent/two-working-parent households that leave less time for preparing meals or sitting down to eat them together. portion sizes have been increasing over the last 25 years . if you put more food in front of a person, they will eat more. there are 1001 reasons that waistlines have been expanding and MSG is not one of them. neither is aspartate or lysine or any of the other amino acids, at least not in the amounts that are present in even the most extreme western diet. see http://www.snopes.com/toxins/aspartame.asp for more.

as for the idea that teaching kids that being overweight is bad for them leads to anorexia -- greg critser lays into the idea at length in _fat land_, and i refer anyone who's interested to it for more in depth information than i can offer here. suffice it to say that teaching people about proper eating + exercise habits doesn't make people anorexic; being from an upper-income background and having control issues is much more likely to do it. in any case, obesity kills and injures and reduces the quality of life for many many many more times the people that anorexia does. getting people to eat better from the start is probably the best and most pain-free way to live healthily. worry about excitotoxicity when you're having a stroke. otherwise, eat well.

I knew a family who have their baby pepsi in his bottle when he went to sleep.

Years of teeth problems ahead.

This made me laugh. Why? Because people are always asking me if I'm on a diet since I prefer not to eat at McDonald's. And no, I'm not on a diet; I just like healthy like Midnyte said. It just cracks me up when people (Americans, specifically) think that if you're not drinking soda and pumping cheeseburgers into your mouth, you're dieting.

/begin rant

Of course, a little physical activity won't kill anyone either. Ok readers, when was the last time you went for a jog? Not a long one - just a mile or 10 minutes whichever comes first for you. Don't forget to take the kids if you have 'em. Now go and get 'em!

/end rant

Did you read what I wrote? I said there are other reasons, but even so, NO reason alone exists within a vacuum, and I pointed out possible correlations/reciprocity with other factors. Someone else said the problem was "systemic", as if that countered what I was saying-- absolutely, that's exactly what I was explaining. Look: System-- A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. I was explaining how MSG interacts with other factors.

I guess the dozens upon dozens of people I've helped control fibromyalgia, migraines, hypoglycemia, mood swings, lose weight, etc.. by learning to recognize and limit MSG were all hypochondriacs.

Also, the "fact" that Chinese and Japanese people consume more MSG is a fallacy. Maybe it was true 20 years ago, but not now and especially not in the more rural areas where people tend to be healthier. Also, I've seen this statement before, and it turned out it only referred to the listed ingredient "Monosodium glutamate", not other sources of excitatory amino acids. They tend to have a better diet all around, too, yes. Especially, they eat a lot more fish, and thus get more Taurine, which combats the effects of excitotoxicity, as I said.

How is this really different from what I'm saying? That kind of food is loaded with excitotoxins, and no nutrients to replenish what is lost after large dose of MSG. Are you just saying people eat it 'cause it's available? it's available because it's addictive, and because it allows food comanies to get away with using cheaper ingredients. Wild blackberries are very available, in people's back yards everywhere where I come from, but you rarely see people eating them, even though it's easier than going to the store.

I wouldn't start making arbitrary blanket statements like that. Alllll of the studies I've examined that make that claim are highly flawed, and most of them were funded by Ajinomoto, the largest manufacture of MSG. Remember, just 'cause there's a study on it, doesn't make it true.

You do make some good points, and no doubt our sedentary lifestyles has a large effect on the issue, I never denied that.

Man.. I guess people are so used to hearing people praise the next new panacea, when anyone ever tries to help someone, you're automatically assumed to be completely misled, irrational, or sensationalistic. Meh.

[Edited on Dec 31, 2004 by pygmy]

It's too bad one has to be so well versed in nutrition and the body to know what to eat and what to avoid. Most of this goes over my head (as far as actual understanding goes) because I'm a computer guy, rather than a biology guy. If I took the time that is necessary to understand the role of all ingredients in my food, before I eat it, I would never be able to eat.

in many of the industrialized counties, breastfeeding has become 'inconvient' for most. what we don't realize is that colostrum, the first bit of milk, contains more benefits than i can mention, but one is that it coats the digestive tract, lowering the chances of obesity later in life.

countless newborns are being fed sugar water within the first hours of life to raise their glucose levels, which sets them up for digestive difficulties.

the world average for breastfeeding is 4.5 years, brought down by the US (which nurses for an average of 6 months) and brought up by Asia, (who nurse for up to 7 years). This is another thing that may contribute to the lower rateof obesity in asia.

bwahahahahaha

the kids aren't all right



i feel really bad for kids this young and already overweight. we all know how cruel kids can be to anyone that isn't what the consider normal. if i had children, i'd feel really guilty if they were seriously overweight. i just don't understand some parents today. they just give their kids whatever they want, and wonder why the end up having so many problems.

i know that raising children isn't easy, but parents have to know their role. they're the ones that should be telling the kids what to do, and not the other way around. they should be teaching the kids values, and how to lead a relatively healthy lifestyle. you don't have to eat "rabbit food" all the time to be considered healthy. personally, i love to have pizza, burgers and stuff like that(moderation is the word of the day). too much of a good thing.....you know the rest.

As a mommy myself, I find it horrifying to see children so large. my child has a huge appetite...for good foods. I refuse to feed her junk food and plop her in front of the tv. my tv doesn't work and we don't care, since she'd rather play and I'd rather it not raise her. the only time my daughter gets mcdonalds happy meals is after going to the doctor and getting shots. it's a treat. people do not take the time out to cook and spend time with their children. no fair to them. yes, I work a full time job and raise her by myself and keep up my own home. so please, it is possible to make time to boil a pot of water and put in some veggies and sit down for 30 minutes. No, I am not saying I am perfect, but I am trying my damnedest to give my daughter the same good eating habits that mine took the time out to teach me.

I remember seeing an episode of Seinfeld where jerry was apalled seeing a parent feed their child greasy fries and calling it child abuse. it's kinda funny, kinda sad. I hate seeing little kids eat so badly.

In old navy, pretty recently I saw a sign "girls now in plus girls' sizes" yeah, we all are in different shapes and sizes, but it is a little unnerving to know that there are enough overweight children to create a demand for childrens plus sized clothing.

what a fuckin surprise

No so surprising. Sign of the times I guess.