America's Healthier Coffee: December 2012

Monday, December 31, 2012

Combo-Snacks Of Cheese And Vegetables Cut Kids Calories

Main Category: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Article Date: 22 Dec 2012 - 0:00 PST Current ratings for:
Combo-Snacks Of Cheese And Vegetables Cut Kids Calories
4 stars

Almost everyone is familiar with the alarming trend of childhood obesity. 32% of U.S. children are overweight or obese according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. One of the many factors leading to the obesity epidemic is increased snacking in children. Today children eat around three snacks daily while thirty years ago they ate only one. Parents want to ensure that their children snack healthfully, but restricting or limiting children's snacking can backfire. Children in homes where parents carefully regulate snacking were found to eat more unhealthy snacks in an unregulated environment than children with less restrictive parents.

Researchers Brian Wansink, Ph.D., Mitsuru Shimizu, Ph.D., and Adam Brumberg set out to discover whether certain types of snacks would lead children to feel full while consuming fewer calories. 201 students in the third through sixth grade were given either a plate of potato chips, a plate of vegetables, a plate of cheese, or a plate of vegetables and cheese while watching some of their favorite afterschool cartoons. They were asked about their fullness at the beginning of the experiment, after watching one episode of a cartoon, and again after watching a second episode of a cartoon.

Children who ate the vegetable and cheese snack plate needed significantly fewer calories than the children who ate the plate of potato chips to achieve satiety. Further, children from low-involvement families (families which spent less time eating meals together or interacting with each other while eating) ate more potato chips than other children when given potato chips to snack on. However, children from low-involvement families and overweight children showed the greatest reduction in the amount of calories consumed when eating the cheese and vegetable snack instead of potato chips. Overweight and obese children ate 76% fewer calories when they were given the cheese and vegetable snack while other children averaged a 60% reduction in calories eaten. Both groups reported being as full when eating the Cheese and veggie snack as they did when eating chips.

Use these results to help your child eat fewer calories when snacking, try: Having more nutritious snacks available instead of eliminating snacking Substituting a healthier snack like veggies and cheese in place of chips on a regular basis Offering smaller quantities of a variety of healthy snacks (multiple kinds of vegetables or fruit) on a plate. Variety tends to stimulate consumption; increasing the healthy options available can lead to more of them being selected and eaten. Encouraging children to be mindful of internal cues and stop eating when they feel full Written by Sandra Cleveland and Adam Brumberg Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our obesity / weight loss / fitness section for the latest news on this subject. Association of Nutrient-Dense Snack Combinations With Calories and Vegetable Intake, Brian Wansink, PhDa, Mitsuru Shimizu, PhDa, and Adam Brumberg, BS, Pediatrics, Published online December 17, 2012, doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-3895

Cornell Food & Brand Lab

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Host Cholesterol Secretion Likely To Influence Gut Microbiota

Main Category: Cholesterol
Also Included In: GastroIntestinal / Gastroenterology
Article Date: 25 Dec 2012 - 0:00 PST Current ratings for:
Host Cholesterol Secretion Likely To Influence Gut Microbiota
5 stars

For more than half a century, researchers have known that the bacteria that colonize the gastrointestinal tract of mammals influence their host's cholesterol metabolism. Now, Jens Walter and colleagues of the University of Nebraska show that changes in cholesterol metabolism induced by diet can alter the gut flora. The research was published online ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

In the study, the researchers added plant sterol esters to the diets of hamsters. The overall effect of this was to inhibit several bacterial taxa, from the families Coriobacteriacea and Erysipelotrichaceae, says Walter. But the immediate effect of the plant sterols was to physically block cholesterol absorption by the intestine. That decreased cholesterol levels in the liver and the plasma, prompting the hamster's body to respond by synthesizing more cholesterol. That, in turn, boosted cholesterol excretion into the gut, and that extra cholesterol was the direct inhibitor of those bacterial families.

"The abundance of these bacterial taxa and the levels of cholesterol in the fecal samples followed a mathematical model of bacterial inhibition," says Walter.

Practically speaking, the microbial inhabitants of the gut are part of the metabolic system. Researchers have shown that certain health problems are related to changes in the gut flora, such as can be induced by overuse of antibiotics. Since changes in diet can influence composition of the gut flora, health problems such as obesity might be targeted by dietary interventions designed to suppress bacteria that contribute to weight gain. "However, for these to be successful, we need to know which bacterial patterns not only are associated with disease, but actually contribute to it," says Walter, noting that his research showed that some alterations associated with metabolic disease might be the consequence, rather than the cause of the disorder.

Walter says that the work was a real student project. Among the coauthors, three were graduate students, and two were undergraduates. "As a supervisor, it is extremely nice to see young scientists work as a team, and staying dedicated through the five years that this project took to complete," he says.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our cholesterol section for the latest news on this subject. A copy of the manuscript can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip1212b. Formal publication is scheduled for the January 2013 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

(I. Martinez, D.J. Perdicaro, A.W. Brown, S. Hammons, T.J. Carden, T.P. Carr, K.M. Eskridge, and J. Walter, 2012. Diet-induced alterations of host cholesterol metabolism are likely to affect gut microbiota composition in hamsters. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2012 Nov 2. [Epub ahead of print])

American Society for Microbiology