Thursday, August 30, 2007

Welcome

This blog will provide readers with my final word on this week's children's health news, as well as links to the most relevant health topics impacting what's most important to you--your children. In order to create a coherent blog, I will normally focus on one area of children's health that's making headlines (this week--obesity).

As you may be aware, childhood obesity is an epidemic in our society. In recent weeks, the topic continues to make headlines with several new studies on the matter and even Shaq weighing (no pun intended) in on the matter (i.e. "Shaq's Big Challenge"; see http://www.abc.com/ for t.v. times in your area). A recent issue of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine revealed what we in this business have assumed to be true for many years--that food branding impacts kids' taste perceptions (see an insightful article published in last week's New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/health/nutrition/14nugg.html?ex=1188619200&en=9e8e2de89b6584ca&ei=5070). In the study, children (ages 3 to 5) from a low socio-economic area tasted five identical foods and beverages in McDonald's and unbranded packaging; the researchers concluded that children preferred McDonald's packaged food over unbranded food (77 percent of the children sampled preferred McDonald's french fries and 54 percent preferred carrots in McDonald's packaging). In related news, a study in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that among 14,000 children diagnosed with hypertension only 26 percent of the cases were properly documented by pediatricians (http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-web_hypertensionaug22,1,6951803.story; http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/298/8/874). Obesity is dramatically impacting our youth increasing their likelihood of suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and heart attack. In plain English, obesity issues could cut short the life of your child. If you doubt me, chew on this link (http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-obesity28aug28,1,2527430.story?coll=la-headlines-health&ctrack=1&cset=true) That's all for now!