Syrupy-Sweet

High-fructose corn sweeteners are cheap for food manufacturers to make and use, but the sweeteners may come with a hidden cost: your waistline. Barry Popkin and Samara Nielsen worked with George Bray of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center to show that a sudden increase in national obesity rates occurred shortly after high-fructose corn sweeteners hit the market around 1970. Our consumption of the stuff increased tenfold between 1970 and 1990 — by far the largest increase in consumption of any food or food group. And you might be surprised at the range of foods it shows up in — soda, but also tomato soup and hamburger buns. Fructose affects the body differently than a sugar such as glucose, so it doesn’t help you feel full, Popkin says. Fructose also helps create fat more readily than glucose. The group’s report appeared in the April 2004 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sick for Longer

If you’re obese, you face a greater risk of getting sick than your normal-weight friends. And you also stay in the hospital longer, according to a study led by Claire Zizza. She and colleagues used data from a national survey of 14,407 U.S. residents to show that obese people had hospital stays ranging from 50 to 130 percent longer than healthy-weight individuals. “The longer hospital stays were evident despite the general trend over time toward shorter hospital stays,” Zizza says. A report appears in the September 2004 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Coauthors were Amy Herring, June Stevens, and Barry Popkin.

Watch Your Weekends

Eat. Lounge on the couch. Watch a football or basketball game. Eat. Watch a second game. Eat. Drink a beer or two or three. And eat. Welcome to the weekend. Not all of our weekends go like this, of course, but this routine reflects enough of the average Americans’ habits that we — those of us between the ages of nineteen and fifty — consume, on average, about 115 more calories per day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday than the rest of the week, a study coauthored by Barry Popkin found. Alcohol and fat consumption account for about 80 percent of this increase. Over a year, the 115 calories — about half the size of a candy bar — add up to about seventeen thousand extra calories, which equals five pounds. Five pounds may not seem like much, but add up five pounds over ten years, and you’ve got another reason for obesity in America. This study appeared in the August 8, 2003, Obesity Research; coauthors include Pamela Haines and David Guilkey.

More of Us are Eating More

Between 1977 and 1996, people of every age group in the United States ate more high-calorie foods such as soft drinks and pizza, and also ate more restaurant food and fast food, than their counterparts of one generation ago. Each age group also ate more snacks and drank less low- and medium-fat milk. People are less physically active now than in past decades, the researchers say, which combines with these increases in caloric intake to raise our risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other health threats. “By now, most people know they should eat more fruits and vegetables and fewer high-energy foods, but that doesn’t mean they are doing it,” says Samara Joy Nielsen. Nielsen’s coauthors were Anna Maria Siega-Riz and Barry Popkin. A report on this research appeared in the May 2002 Obesity Research.

WIC Works

More than thirty years later, WIC still works. The U.S. government created the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in the 1970s to fight malnutrition, but the program still exceeds it goals amidst today’s growing problems of obesity and chronic diseases, according to a study led by Anna Maria Siega-Riz. Compared to other children, preschoolers enrolled in WIC snacked less, and the WIC participants with the lowest family incomes had diets higher in carbs and fruits, and lower in fats and added sugars. The study was published in the February 2004 Journal of Pediatrics.

Obesity in Every Corner of the World

Except in the very poorest areas — India, Haiti, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa — young women now are more likely to be too fat than too thin. After analyzing data from 148,579 people from thirty-six developing countries worldwide, Carolina researchers found that, in urban areas, 80 percent of the countries showed twice as many people were overweight as underweight. Even in rural areas, in half of the countries the number of overweight women was twice as high the number of those underweight. According to Michelle Mendez, obesity has become a threat to public health worldwide. “These data show that efforts to prevent being overweight need to reach beyond urban settings, especially in countries with higher income and urbanization levels,” she says. The National Institutes of Health supported the study, which appeared in the March issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Authors were Mendez and Barry Popkin. Carlos Monteiro of Sao Paulo University in Brazil also participated in the research.

Teenage Waistland

The “freshman fifteen” isn’t a myth. In analyzing data from a study that tracked 16.6 million adolescents from 1996-2001, Penny Gordon-Larsen, Linda Adair, Barry Popkin, and Melissa Nelson found that the transition from adolescence to young adulthood is a time when young people are at great risk of gaining weight. In 1996, 11 percent of the thirteen- to twenty-one-year-olds were obese, and as the group turned into young adults, that number grew to 22 percent. Older adolescents were more likely to remain obese than younger teens.

BMI Underused

Body mass index (BMI) may be a popular way to determine who’s overweight and who’s not, but it may not be popular with your child’s pediatrician. Eliana Perrin and colleagues found, in a survey of members of the North Carolina Pediatrics Society, that almost a third of pediatricians reported never considering BMI when deciding if a child is overweight, while 11 percent of pediatricians always reported using BMI, which is calculated by dividing people’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. The researchers also found that pediatricians who were given a vignette of an overweight ten-year-old girl with her BMI were more likely to consider the girl “too fat” and express concern for her health than pediatricians who were given the same vignette but with height and weight data. “BMI charting prompts greater recognition of a weight problem,” the researchers conclude, “yet BMI is inconsistently used,” despite childhood overweight constituting a “major health problem.” According to the N.C. Division of Public Health, about 16 percent of children in North Carolina are overweight. The study appeared in the April 2004 Journal of Pediatrics; coauthors were Kori Flower and Alice Ammerman.

Making a Difference

If you can gain weight, you can lose weight. And though it may be a heck of lot easier to do the former, Carolina researchers are working to help make the latter more than a fleeting New Year’s resolution. For example, a church-based obesity prevention program called “Girls Rule!” — of which Alice Ammerman is principal investigator — teaches girls aged six through nine and their caregivers how to use dietary choices, physical activity, and positive self-image to maintain a healthy weight. Another program led by Marci Campbell helps Latino women and women in blue-collar manufacturing jobs increase their fruit and vegetable consumption and decrease fat consumption through individualized and tailored programs. Finally, Carolina’s N.C. Institute for Public Health, with GlaxoSmithKline and N.C. Prevention Partners, created a toolkit to help elementary, middle, and high schools address obesity in classrooms, identify children at risk for health problems, and connect families with health-care providers for the intervention and prevention of obesity-related health problems, through a three-year pilot program, “Healthy Schools, Healthy Weight.”

Pop Goes the Waistline

Americans are chugging more sweet drinks, shunning milk, and growing more obese every year. A study led by Barry Popkin found that energy intake from soft drinks and fruit drinks bloated 135 percent between 1977 and 2001, while the energy intake from milk sagged 38 percent. Portion sizes also swelled, from an average of 13.6 ounces to a whopping 21 ounces. To Popkin, these numbers spell trouble for Americans’ health. Trading milk for sugary drinks promotes obesity, increases the risk of diabetes, and reduces the intake of necessary calcium, he says. The study appeared in the October 2004 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Authors were Popkin and Samara Joy Nielsen.

Smarter, Not Richer

If you live in the United States and eat smart, you can probably thank your education, not your wealth. A study led by Barry Popkin was the first to document the importance of education over income in the American diet, contradicting the widely held assumption that affluence is the best predictor of a healthful diet. “We found that education is the key factor explaining dietary change of U.S. adults over the past three decades,” Popkin says. Analyzing data from surveys supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, researchers found that the highest-quality U.S. diets occurred among women who had attended college. The least healthful diets occurred among people with low incomes and little education. In the 1960s, few differences existed across education and income ranges in dietary quality, the researchers found. A report on the study appeared in the July 2003 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Authors were Popkin, Claire Zizza, and Anna Maria Siega-Riz.

Rein in Runaway Eating

Facing stressful jobs or trouble at home, too many women are looking for comfort in food. According to a new book by Cynthia Bulik, the number of women aged thirty and older seeking treatment for eating problems has risen at an alarming rate over the past five years. For example, the Cornell Eating Disorders Program has seen a 50 percent increase in treatment for women thirty years and older since 2000. Why? “Runaway eating,” Bulik says. Warning signs of runaway eating include exhaustive exercises to burn off calories, at least one out-of-control eating binge a year, and alternating from severe dieting to overeating. Bulik’s book, Runaway Eating: the Eight-Point Plan to Conquer Adult Food and Weight Obsessions, offers an eight-step program to help people establish healthy eating habits and cope with stress.

Expectant Moms Need Choline

You might have heard that expectant mothers need to get adequate amounts of choline (plentiful in meats, eggs, and nuts) to prevent memory deficits in their babies. Steven Zeisel and colleagues showed why: lack of choline turns on a gene that slows or halts cell division, leading to reduced production of memory cells in the brain. The study was published in the April 2004 Journal of Neurochemistry. Doctoral student Mihai Niculescu Yutaka Yamamuro was coauthor.