Five for Fridays – Aug 7, 2009

Greetings!This week is the World Breastfeeding Week. Organized by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), the focus this year is In Emergencies, Breastfeeding is a Lifeline. I never thought about breastfeeding this way, but it makes sense. Children and infants are most vulnerable during a catastrophic emergency – whether natural or man-made. According to WABA estimates, child mortality can be 2 to 70 times higher than normal under these conditions due to diarrhea, malnutrition and respiratory illness. They believe that by supporting breastfeeding in non-emergency situations, we can be better prepared to save the lives of young children during emergencies. Here is a great post by my blogger friend Annie on this subject by Annie on PhdInParenting.

Here again are 5 interesting nutrition stories of the week that caught my eye. Enjoy and drop a comment to let me know what’s on your mind.

Millions of kids vitamin D deficient – here we go again!

It seems like our appetite for reporting vitamin D deficiency in kids is insatiable! In yet another study published recently in Pediatrics, researchers report an alarming prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in kids 1-21 years old. They find that 9% (about 7.6 million) children are deficient and 61% (about 50.8 million) have insufficient levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This news got a lot of coverage this week, mainly because the numbers seem so high. Also, in the same article, these researchers highlight a link between low levels of vitamin D and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This sounds really scary, and no doubt, makes a perfect headline for an attention-grabbing story.

I have a few problems with these types of studies. First, they rely mainly on the level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D in blood. There is no consensus among experts when it comes to estimating deficiency or insufficiency in children. Second, the biochemistry and processing of vitamin D is very complex, something I don’t claim to understand at all. But I am certain of this – it cannot be as simple as just the blood level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D which relates to cardiovascular health or bone density. But the real reason why I get frustrated is that these studies do not answer the “so what?” question a parent might be concerned about. Drink milk and vitamin D fortified OJ, let your kids out to play, not watch too much TV – well, that is old advice and should be followed with our without such sensational news.  Should you ask your pediatrician for a 25-hydroxyvitamin D test? Should you take supplements? There is no real, practical and actionable advice from these “experts”.

My 2 cents – when you hear this type of news, take a deep breath and don’t panic. Take a quick look at what your child is getting on average – milk, OJ, cereals, fish, eggs, cod liver oil etc. How much outdoor activity in the sun he gets on average. Take a long term view on this but continue to watch the diet and activity level regularly. If you still have doubts, ask your pediatrician if a supplement is needed.

No one wants to hang out with overweight kids

Why are overweight kids so picked on? A very interesting post from Dr Joanna Dolgoff – one of our Ask the Expert contributors – provides some insight. Appears that kids have more sympathy for children with handicaps, and would rather be friends with them, than hang out with overweight or aggressive kids. Deep down, overweight kids are blamed for their condition. They should be able to change it by losing weight is a common belief. I wrote about this in my post on childhood obesity because this kind of negativity leads to low self-esteem and a downward spiral of physical and emotional health problems among overweight and obese kids. Stereotypes about obesity form early in life it seems.

FDA and USDA get a budget of $125 billion

That is a giant number! Extra funding is supposed to go for improving food safety and farm subsidies. What surprised me though is the estimate that almost half of the budget for the two agencies is set aside for food stamps and Government nutrition programs. What kind of a return on investment can we expect from this level of spending? I find it ironical that on one hand we spend extra on healthcare in managing obesity-related diseases, while on the other, we have to also budget a huge amount fighting hunger and poverty. These two problems are two sides of the same coin in my opinion, but I do not yet see a comprehensive policy (and budget) to address them. We know that there is poor communication and cooperation between different Government agencies – the right hand does not know what the left is doing, but both want to get bigger and fatter and demand more funding! And as far as food safety is concerned, the approach is to focus on compliance rather than prevention. This smells of more bureaucracy to me!

So many cooking shows, so little cooking

Michale Pollan wrote a very good – although very long – article in the New York Times magazine this week. Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch takes us through the history of cooking shows starting with Julia Child to the likes of present day Iron Chef and Rachel Ray. We watch the Prime Time food network for entertainment value these days, not to learn anything about cooking the food ourselves! Pollan makes two great points – one, that the food industry along with the Television has been quite successful in taking over the “cooking” part from us by providing us with relatively cheap, readily available, packaged nutrition (poor nutrition I must admit). And second, that we are now quite comfortable ordering fancy items at restaurants and our appetite and desire for an ever increasing array of foods seem never ending. The less we cook, the more we eat and the more weight we put on. So how can we get back to cooking? We don’t have time for cooking, but we have time to watch a cooking show. Seems to me it is a matter of priority and attitude. I think we need to invoke Nike’s Just Do It! for preparing our own food. Not necessarily from scratch, as a lot of purists might want you to, but enough so that you can control what goes inside your body.

Check out this cookbook review and giveaway

Here is a shout out for my blogger friend Jenna of Kidappeal. She has done a great review of Vegetables Get the Royal Treatment by Jill Nussinow (aka The Veggie Queen!), and she is giving away a copy of this book to one lucky winner selected from the comments on the post. It is very simple to enter – all you need to do is to leave a comment about your favorite vegetable and your favorite ways to prepare and eat it. Check it out, the contest ends on August 16th.

Enjoy your weekend! And let me know what you think.

Photo source -Raphael Goetter on Flickr via everystockphoto
©2009 Littlestomaks.com

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Tagged as: Books, Breastfeeding, Childhood Obesity, FDA, Giveaway, Michael Pollan, Overeating, overweight, USDA, Vitamin D