Teens eating better but gaining weight

Adolescents are choosing healthier foods but getting heavier

Kathryn Hulick

Mar 4, 2016 — 7:15 am EST

            A new study shows that teens are starting to cut back on sugary foods in favor of healthier choices. 

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American kids are getting heavier. Too much extra weight puts kids, and adults, at risk for dangerous diseases. But a new study reveals some good news. Kids are showing signs of improvement in key markers of a potentially serious condition known as metabolic syndrome. Better food choices likely triggered this change, new data suggest.
Metabolic syndrome is a group of symptoms that, taken together, mark people at high risk of heart disease and diabetes. This syndrome used to show up when adults got fat. Today, many kids develop the syndrome, too.

Explainer: What is metabolic syndrome?

             The syndrome can emerge when people eat too much sugar and don’t get enough exercise. Weight gain is the most obvious symptom. But other invisible issues also develop, which serve as red flags that something is wrong. These include obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high levels of bad fats and low levels of good cholesterol. Three or more of these issues will lead to a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome.
Mark DeBoer is a doctor and medical researcher at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville. He and his colleagues wanted to track signs of metabolic syndrome in U.S. teens. They took a look at the health of 5,117 adolescents over a time period spanning 1999 to 2012. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, in Atlanta, Ga., had gathered the information on these kids, aged 12 to 19. CDC regularly surveys people about their health. The data they collect give researchers a picture of the overall health of people throughout the United States.
            Over the 13-year span studied, teens got increasingly heavier. But surprisingly, the total amount of food they ate dropped somewhat. At the same time, other aspects of teen health improved. In 2012, teens had lower levels of bad fats, also called triglycerides, than in 1999. They also had higher levels of good cholesterol. “This likely means that there is a slight decrease in the risk of future disease in this age group,” concludes DeBoer.
              His team’s study appeared February 9 in Pediatrics.
What changed over the studied period? Teens in the later years were eating less sugary food. They also ate more unsaturated fat. It’s considered a “good” fat. Examples of such fats include olive oil and the fat in tuna fish. The diet changes were not huge. Still, DeBoer hopes that the results mean that teens and their families are getting the message that foods with extra sugar and fat, such as soft drinks and pizza, can be bad for us.
But that message still may not be clear enough, says Melanie Cree-Green. A pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Cree-Green was not involved in the research.
             “The study needs to encourage us to do more,” she says. The health improvements seen were very gradual, she notes. Plus, the amount of exercise they got stayed the same, or may have even fallen. This could explain why teens ate less food, overall, but still gained weight. (The way activity was measured changed during the study. As a result, it was difficult to tell how exercise habits changed over the 13 years.)
              “The big message for our teens,” she says, “is that we need to move more and keep up the great job of cutting out sugar-sweetened beverages.”
The key to success, in Cree-Green’s experience, is for parents to face the challenge of weight loss alongside their kids. When families change their diets together and exercise together, everyone wins.