From health officials, it is clear that the main causes of obesity (beside genetics) are:
- Sedentariness (how much one is in active)
- Portion control (how much one eats)
- Food choices (what one eats)
- Avoid processed foods
- Avoid sugar/added sugar
- Avoid fried foods
The above sounds quite simple, and one might say this comes down to choices (be more active, eat less, and eat less of certain things). Why is it so difficult and what is causing the mostly worldwide spike in obesity and its attendant discomforts?
Sedentariness
Sedentariness has complexity and a need for clear definition, though its increase is largely understood as a change in the work and leisure environments and attendant activity levels of people. Several aspects, such as measurement of activity by a given hour than in a given day, seems to be more appropriate. That is, one cannot be active for an hour then sit around another eight hours or more. Intermittantly sustained activity is potentially more valuable.
Portion Control
For children, there is an intuitive idea that appropriate portion control is largely intuitive and built-in at a young age. The best study on this was done in the 1930s (and for various reasons likely could not be duplicated now). Clara M. Davis performed a multi-year study titled The self-selection of diets by young children. Eventually fifteen children where included in a study (no children were included for less than six months, and all but two from 1 to 4.5 years). Providing them with healthy options each mealtime, with a wide selection of options including small dishes of salt and spoonfulls of cod-liver oil. Children who were clearly nutrient and vitamin deprived self-regulated their eating choices to overcome such afflictions.
The key to this of course was the choice of food options, which were varied and all more-or-less healthy, including: water, sweet milk, sour milk, sea salt, apples, bananas, orange juic, fresh pineapple, peaches, tomatoes, beets, carrots, peas, turnips, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach, potates, lettuse, oatmeal, wheet, corn meal, barley, Ry-Krisp, beef, lamp, bone marrow, bone jelly, chicken, sweetbreads, brains, liver, kidneys, fish (haddock). Not all options were available at all meals, but divided up into three or four meals (for early years) per day. Salt was in a separate dish, not added to any food.
Picky eating
What is now called picky eating can be easily dealt with with the following suggestions from the American Academy of Pediatrics:
Introduce a variety foods multiple times and in multiple ways
Preferences for one or two foods or refusal of certain foods (picky-eating) are normal behaviors in children in this age group. Best practice is to foster healthy eating by continuing to expose them to a variety of nutritious foods, with minimal deviation from these practices in response to children’s behaviors.
...
Parent Provides, Child Decides
Offer healthy food in age-appropriate portions at meals and snacks. Let child decide what and how much to eat. Children have an innate ability to self-regulate their food intake.
Three parenting practices have been shown to be associated with excess weight gain: feeding in response to emotional distress, using food as a reward, and excessive prompting or encouragement to eat.
Among toddlers, there is variability of caloric intake from meal to meal, but total intake remains consistent over a 24-hour period.
The key to portion control is healthy options
The food enviornment of an individual has a great impact on the ability to make appropriate choices and to enage in effective portion control. This makes particular sense when our world is flooded with highly processed foods, to the detriment of actual healthy food options.
Some families in urban areas live in ‘food deserts’, or neighbourhoods where fresh produce and healthy food markets are nowhere to be found. Others live in ‘food swamps’, where unhealthy choices like fast food and chain restaurants overwhelm and underprice the number of healthy options.
Childhood obesity and food choices
In comparison to traditional television and print marketing, digital marketing poses a unique challenge. Globally, one in three internet users is estimated to be a child. With the rise of smartphones, food marketers have a direct channel for advertising that can precisely target children and is available to them almost all of the time.
Without effective regulation, this constant stream of food marketing – on TV, in print, on digital channels – is impossible for children to escape. Government legislation appears to be the most effective way to reduce unhealthy food sales, and the World Health Organization urges governments to commit to ending childhood obesity by using proven approaches to promote better nutrition and regulate the marketing of unhealthy food to children.
Our family has two children (ages 7 and 9), one of whom still pretty much can follow his own impulses regarding portion control. He will of course eat lots of garbage, processed foods and sweets, if given the option. However, at home, with healthy choices, sometimes he eats a lot and other times not as much. His weight-to-height ratios have always been steady and healthy over time. Even though his mother and I sometimes try and get him to eat more, he resists this (he is good at demand-avoidance). His brother however has shot past that state and now tends to overeat. Even the other day, after he ate a lot, he asked to eat another whole dish of food (and was denied). Ten minutes later, he said he felt that he already ate too much (which he had indeed). Self-regulation is broken, and he needs parental intervention. His height-weight is getting out of whack, especially the past year.
Processed foods
Animal, Vegetable, Junk is a good read on how processed foods are not actually food, and instead a manipulation by the big food industry. Indeed, processed foods have been found to be particularly bad for humans.
Sugar and its substitutes
Added sugar is a bane, and especially non-sugar substitutes (both fake sugar and things like corn syrup). The idea is to avoid sweetened foods. This is difficult when the local culture celebrates sweets, especially packaged and highly processed sweets. One can only do what one can. Having a bit of jam (real, with < 50% sugar, no corn syrup) and actual genuine honey (from a local beekeeper) is one step forward, as well as not using much if at all anything with added sugar (homemade ketchup can cut down on sugar tremendously (18% by weight in commercial brands).
Cooking oils
Fried foods also are disproporionately poor for one's health, and given that edible oils are a large percentage of worldwide calories, paying attention to one's oil consumption is obviously important. Given that olive oil is the top three most fraudulant foods (olive oil, honey, seafood), turning to it is not the panacea one wishes for. Simply reducing the amount of oil (that is, specifically avoiding deep fried foods as much as possible), is the key.
For our home, we use butter (for eggs, pancakes, etc.) and occasionally small amounts of Canola oil (rapeseed) for things like roasted potato wedges.