Read Atkins Diabetes Revolution Online
Authors: Robert C. Atkins
As sad and overwhelming as it is to hear that more than half of American adults are overweight or obese, it’s truly shocking to hear the current statistics on children. One in three children born in the year 2000 is destined to get diabetes as an adult.
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Childhood overweight and obesity has become an epidemic. More than 15 percent of American kids ages 6 to 19 are now overweight. Incidence of overweight and obesity among this age group has nearly tripled in the last 20 years.
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Carrying excess weight sets the stage for serious health problems that begin early and last a lifetime—a lifetime that may well be shorter than it should be. In fact, so many kids today are so seriously over- weight that we are looking at the first generation that may have a shorter life span than their parents.Morever,as we’ll discuss in the next chapter,there has been a staggering rise in the number of children with Type 2 diabetes. Without mincing words, this is a crisis for our nation and a personal tragedy for these youngsters and their families.
Fortunately, there is a bright side: Overweight kids have youth on their side. When they control their carb intake and increase their activity level, the results can be amazing. Dr. Atkins found it tremendously satisfying to see a child who was once overweight, sedentary, and withdrawn come back to his office a few months later slimmer and brimming with energy. Formerly overweight children who undergo this transformation are happier as well. Being the butt of jokes and victim of bullying, as many overweight kids are, is enormously painful. As a side benefit, when children lose weight, the parents usually end up slimmer, too—treating childhood obesity and preventing diabetes must be a family affair.
A PROBLEM OF GLOBAL SCALE
Unfortunately, the United States is leading the pack—and the epidemic is spreading, with Europeans,Asians, and other peoples quickly catching up.
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What has caused this explosive growth in childhood overweight and obesity? In recent years, two major factors have contributed: a diet heavy in nutrient-depleted, high-carbohydrate snack foods and sugary drinks (including fruit juice and soda), and a lack of physical activity. As these factors combine with genetics, we have the recipe for a disaster.
The two trends feed each other, only aggravating the situation. Instead of playing outdoors, kids watch television, play video games, or surf the Web as they fill up on carb-packed snack foods. Even when parents make an effort to buy snacks that seem healthy, the “multigrain”cereal bars, fruit snacks, and “real cheese”crackers are just well- disguised junk food made with sugar, hydrogenated oils, and bleached flour. At the same time, more than half of all commercials on children’s television shows hawk snacks, breakfast cereals, and drinks full of sugar, and, of course, high-carb fast food. It’s the rare parent who can resist the pleas to satisfy these demands. A larger number of commercials for snacks actually leads to increased consumption of these foods, according to a recent study.
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Even worse, those same foods are the daily fare your youngsters eat in school. Your child can be served a school lunch of chicken nuggets coated with high-carb batter and deep-fried in unhealthy hydrogenated oil—along with a pile of potato chips, a slice of tomato, and a leaf of iceberg lettuce—as well as canned fruit cocktail in heavy syrup and a heavily sweetened drink. The irony is that this dreadful fare is considered a healthy, well-balanced meal by the federal govern- ment’s dietary standards.
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At the same time,the typical school is full of vending machines selling candy, sugary snack foods, and sweetened drinks as a way to raise desperately needed money for school activities. And even as schools are signing contracts that force them to serve your children high-sugar drinks in the cafeteria, they are cutting back on physical education classes, recess time, and after-school sports—even though the money from the contracts is often supposedly dedicated to sports and other after-school programs! Not only are your kids bulking up (and getting dental cavities) from the food and drinks they’re served in school, they’re often not getting any sort of supervised exercise. This is the worst sort of vicious cycle—and it’s very hard for most parents to counteract its effects.Even if your child is still of normal weight,seemingly healthy, and not displaying any behavioral problems, that does not mean that he or she cannot benefit from cutting down on sugar and other refined carbohydrates.
LIQUID CANDY
Of all the things kids shouldn’t be consuming, sugary drinks top the list. Fruit juice may sound healthy, but it’s really not much more than pure sugar in the form of fructose, without any of the fiber and other nutrients from whole fruit. (It takes eight to ten oranges to produce one glass of orange juice.) Recently, a number of supposedly healthy milk-based drinks have become popular, but they too are crammed with added sugar. The worst of the worst, though, is most carbonated beverages. A typical can of what nutritionists call “liquid candy” is so heavily sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup that it contains the equivalent of up to 10 teaspoons of sugar,
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to say nothing of the caffeine in many of them, which is associated with headaches, irritability, and sleeplessness.
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The average teen today gets about 8 percent of his or her daily calories from soda and other sweetened soft drinks; teenage boys are very heavy consumers of soda, often drinking three or more cans a day. There’s a direct link between soft-drink consumption and weight gain. For every 12-ounce can of soda a youngster drinks each day, the risk of weight gain and becoming obese goes up.
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The weight gain from soda is bad enough,but these drinks also displace other, more nutritious foods. Today, many teens fall short of the recommended intake DRI of one or more of the following nutrients: vitamins A,B
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,C,and E and the minerals calcium,iron,and zinc.
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This is especially dangerous, as young bodies need these nutrients in the proper amounts to continue normal growth and development.
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SKIP THE BUBBLY FOR HEALTHY BONES
Even sugar-free soda isn’t a good beverage choice for kids—or adults. Fizzy drinks,especially colas,contain phosphorus,which can interfere with the skeleton’s ability to absorb calcium. Kids already aren’t getting enough calcium because soda displaces milk and other calcium- rich foods from their diet; the last thing they need is a chemical that interferes with the absorption of what calcium they do get. The result of all this is weaker bones. A recent study of ninth- and tenth-grade girls showed that those who drank the most soft drinks were three times more likely to have a bone fracture than those who drank the least.Among physically active girls,the ones who drank the most colas were five times more likely to have a bone fracture than those who drank the least.
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It appears that not only are obesity and diabetes a major concern for this generation of children, they also face an increased likelihood of osteoporosis.
WHY NOT WATER?
What should youngsters be drinking instead of soda or juice? Plain water is always the simplest and best choice, and nothing quenches thirst better. The best recent teen trend: It seems that carrying around a water bottle has become a fashion accessory. However, sticking to just water while their peers are having soda can be a challenge for many kids.
Caffeine-free sodas made with substitute sweeteners such as Splenda are a reasonable alternative, but only in limited amounts— you want to help your child get over the idea that every drink should be sweet.Flavored seltzer,or seltzer with a splash of sugar-free syrup,is a good compromise. If your child has no blood sugar or weight problems,vegetable juices are acceptable,but all fruit juices have the potential to cause insulin/blood sugar problems and contribute to weight gain. Occasionally—for instance, when you are away from home— you might allow your child to have a small portion of fruit juice (with the lowest-carb count, please). But such drinks should always be accompanied by food containing protein and fat to keep the sugar from being dumped into the bloodstream too quickly.
The same is true of milk, which contains 11 grams of carbs per 8-ounce glass, primarily sugar in the form of lactose. It is best to drink full-fat milk as part of a meal or with a protein snack. If weight or insulin/blood sugar problems exist, consider limiting milk to one 8-ounce glass a day, depending on blood sugar response. If your child wants more milk, try one of the new reduced-carb dairy beverage products. Look for one with at least 10 grams of protein and about 3 grams Net Carbs per 8-ounce glass.You probably needn’t worry about calcium—if
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following the Atkins Nutritional Approach (ANA) or the Atkins Blood Sugar Control Program (ABSCP)—since your child will probably be getting plenty of calcium from the greater amounts of cheese and vegetables you are serving. Of course, your child will almost certainly eat more carbohydrates than you do.
SOY FOODS FOR KIDS
Parents sometimes serve kids soymilk instead of milk, but some cautions apply here. Unless it’s unsweetened soymilk (which contains anywhere from 1 to 4 grams of Net Carbs per 8 ounces), this may not make much of a difference in terms of carb count.Youngsters may not like the taste of unsweetened soymilk, however. Sweetened soymilk, which is sometimes labeled a little misleadingly as “plain” (meaning unflavored) soymilk, has added sugar to cover the taste; 8 ounces contains about 12 grams of Net Carbs. Flavored soymilks have even more. There are about 28 Net Carb grams in 8 ounces of chocolate-flavored soymilk. Avoid sweetened and flavored products altogether.
There are other reasons to be cautious about soy.Some children are allergic to it (though soy is recommended as an alternative for kids who are allergic to milk). Soy also contains phytoestrogens, natural chemicals that can weakly mimic the action of the female sex hormone estrogen.To avoid any hormonal effects from soymilk and other soy products such as tofu (bean curd),Dr.Atkins recommended limiting youngsters to two servings a day.
THE SNACK TRAP
According to data from the third Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII),
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82 percent of children aged six to eleven reported eating at least one snack a day—and those snacks made up some 20 percent of their daily calories. In order of frequency, the snacks were:
As you can see, the type of snacks most children eat explains in large part why so many of them struggle with their weight. With the exception of whole milk, the only nonprocessed food on the list is fruit, coming in at a distant twelfth. With these two exceptions, all the other foods on the list are not just high in carbs but low in nutritional value. Most are also made with unhealthful hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. The same survey also showed that more than half of all elementary-school-age children ate no fruit on any given day.
A PALATE MAKEOVER
Over and over Dr. Atkins saw children who cut down on their intake of high-carb foods quickly lose their taste for sweets and salty snacks.That doesn’t mean they don’t still enjoy these foods,it simply means that they aren’t beset with cravings for them.When the kids do eat such snacks,as long as they are combined with protein and/or fat, they’re more able to moderate their intake and the food is unlikely to trigger their cravings. Because there are now so many good low-carb substitute foods, kids who need to control their carbs can still enjoy occasional candy bars,ice cream, and even chips—as long as they select a quality low-carb brand. If you’d like to make your own low-carb treats, check the abundance of recipes on www.atkins.com and in any of the good low-carb cookbooks now available, including
Dr. Atkins’ Quick & Easy New Diet Cookbook.
Also turn to page 402 for a small selection of additional recipes.
The same survey indicates that the top five sources of calories for the typical American youngster are, in order, whole and chocolate milk, pizza, soft drinks, low-fat milk, and cold breakfast cereal, a particularly high source of sugar. Three out of ten kids eat less than one serving of vegetables a day.
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These appalling statistics go a long way to explaining why so many children today are overweight. Their diets consist primarily of low-quality carbohydrates.
THE TV TRAP
A lot of junk food is consumed in front of the television. But snacks aside, TV viewing alone is associated with childhood obesity. In a study of sixth and seventh graders in California, more TV meant higher weight. Of the youngsters who watched less than two hours of television each night, 26.2 percent had a BMI (body mass index) at or above the 85th percentile, while among those who watched three or more hours of television each night, 47.1 percent had BMIs at or above the 85th percentile.
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Of course, even 26.2 percent of a group of kids shouldn’t be that heavy, but we know from other studies that less TV viewing is associated with a lower weight. Many people, regardless of age, go on automatic pilot when they are in front of the tube, eating mindlessly, regardless of whether they feel hungry or full.
HOW TO USE LOW-CARB PRODUCTS APPROPRIATELY
The growth of the low-carb replacement foods offers choices to people who miss traditional high-carb foods or are looking for ingredients that cut carbs without sacrificing taste. Low-carb bread makes it easy for kids to take sandwiches to school.Pancake mix is a great breakfast alternative. Shakes and protein bars can make a satisfying occasional after- school snack. But all low-carb products need to be used in moderation. They are not a substitute for whole foods.Make sure your child is eating enough meat, fish, eggs, and other sources of protein and healthy fats as well as vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruit, and whole grains, before he or she fills up on low-carb convenience foods. This advice applies to adults as well.