Slashdot Mirror
Sport Is Unrelated To Obesity In Children
xiox writes "The UK government is planning to stop funding a study to understand obesity in children. The study fits children with accelerometers to measure how much energy each child uses in a day by moving. The results are surprising. Those children who do sports at school do not burn more calories than those who don't. Furthermore there is no correlation between body mass index and the number of calories used! The results are very interesting, suggesting that genetics and diet are the main reasons for childhood obesity, not sport. The UK government is trying to increase the amount of sport in schools."
Even if sports don't help children keep slim, it is proven that it helps adults (in addition to genetics and diet, of course). People who start out as active young children are probably more likely to stay active into adulthood, at least moreso than less active kids. So in that sense, by teaching kids to exercise and be fit, you will potentially increase adult fitness. This alone justifies fitness programs in school.
Recent studies also show that overweight people who excercise are less likely to suffer heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments than people of 'normal' weight who do not excercise.
This is a bit misleading and I hope it doesn't discourage the efforts to get kids to excercise more.
This is an article I found from digg that was very enlightening.
... And a quote from a nutritionist I know: "The childhood obesity epidemic is an epidemic of news stories, not a problem itself."
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
So are these scientists claiming that children don't expend energy while exercising? Don't the laws of conservation apply to children as well, or are they from an alternate universe? The UK should be careful publishing these results, lest some nut starts enslaving children to build his perpetual motion device.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Ok in growing children, physical activity doesn't have as much direct effect as I would have assumed. But I made that assumtion based on the direct effect that physical activity has on the health of adults. If school is there to help prepare our youth to be highly functional adults, learning to value physical fitness and activity is still an important thing to instill in the kiddies, not just for health but for general succes in life. "No woman or guy wakes up beautiful in the morning. The beautiful is a result of smart life choices, smart shopping choices, smart diet choices, smart makeup choices, smart outfit and accessories choices and even smart chair-stylist choices." "It is not just politicians whom we prefer to be beautiful. A number of studies, many involving American economist Daniel Hamermesh, have found that "ugly" people earn less in many walks of life, from advertising to law. The beauty premium seems to apply even in professions where there is no reason to expect that beauty counts."
Both quotes from:http://www.slate.com/id/2161615/
We are all just people.
If the emphasis is on competition and winning, the vast majority of school children don't belong to the few that are advanced a few months in maturation and have the muscle strength to dominate in these competitions and thereby most warm the bench. At all levels from the gym class through the "revenue sports" of high school football (yes, they charge money to watch these kids play football), the emphasis is on winning rather than having a rotation to keep as many kids involved, or even providing any degree of remedial sports training to offer any degree of encouragement or extra support for the kids who don't dominate their sports teams.
There may be some cultural or social reasons for the less athletically gifted to try out for sports teams and be part of the team even if they play a minor supporting role, but the whole sports culture is a kind of primate dominance hierarchy thing rather than focused on keeping as many people physically fit.
Also, I don't know if the Latin teacher is a frustrated Classics scholar, the English teacher is a frustrated attorney, or if the Math teacher is a frustrated research engineer (although the Physics teacher, if you had that subject, was always a little beyond the fringe), but the Gym teacher is most likely a frustrated athlete given the very broad pyramid of people attempting to make a career out of sports with a chosen few at the very tippy top.
I'm amazed there are indeed thin people here on slashdot making their usual comments about their theories on why fat people are fat.
Seriously though all the study showed was that fat kids tend to move around about as much as thin kids. That really has little to do with how in shape they are or how many calories they burn siting still due to having more muscle etc etc. Plus the human body can use vastly different methods to convert energy and all of them have different efficiency values.
For example did the overweight kid stop running as soon as his body switched over to aerobic energy conversion because his lungs started hurting from breathing harder than usual? Theres no way the device can know something crucial like that unless it monitors more than mere movement.
The total energy expenditure (TEE) of the human body is determined by the following equation:
TEE = BMR + PA + TEF
BMR = Basal metabolic rate
This is proportional to the lean body mass, not the BMI (which is a really bad measure of obesity). This is typically 60 - 70% of your TEE
PA = Energy expended during physical activity
This consists of around 20% of your energy expenditure
TEF = Thermic effect of food
This is the energy expended to digest food, typically 10% of kcal's consumed. This really doesn't really come into play in weight gain since eating more food still gives you excess calories (albeit at 90%) and eating less is still fewer calories.
In other words, the majority of your energy expenditure is determined by your basal metabolic rate by a ratio of around 3.5 to 1. This is especially true in children whose BMR's are naturally higher than most adults'. This is not to say that exercise isn't useful. BMR is determined by lean body mass, which is determined by your muscle mass, which is determined by genetics and exercise. Exercise does help you lose weight, but it takes a lot longer than diet. Exercise also has independent benefits on cardiovascular health and a host of other health measures.
So all those people who tell you that losing weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise aren't lying. That's simply the science.
Basically it is saying that every child has a total limit on the activity they do in a day/week. And those limits are all about the same. So if the child is more active during school doing things like sports, they are less active out of school because they are tired. The children who were less active in school sports were more active outside of school doing other things, playing, riding bikes, running around outside, etc., etc... The end result is that it doesn't seem to matter if you promote activity in school since the net total activity is approximitely the same between people active in school verses not active in school. Which means that the problem is not that people are not as active as they have been in the past, it is the food and portions of food they are eating along with their genetic disposition to the kinds of food. Activity level is not a part of the problem of childhood obesity according to this research as it appears that the activity level at least between people who are over-weight and those who are not is not statistically linked. Further study may be able to prove that activity level is not linked to being over-weight. The problem with this conclusion is the fact that it means the food is the problem. And governments have not been very keen on attacking the food industry. Only a few places have done that, and it is usually at the local level, as at the national level, the food industry has too much lobby'ing power in most democratic governments.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I realized I wanted to say more...
Another reason governments have shy'ed away from the food industry is due to most people's feeling that they have the right to choose what they want to eat. I mean, think about it, there would be an uproar if we could no longer put salt on our food. Or can not use butter on a piece of bread. Or make a flourless chocolate cake. Or, etc., etc., etc... People simply won't stand for it. What you can do is educate people on how to properly eat. Try and have resturaunts serve healthier portions (hard to do...). Educate is really the best way, but the problem with that is that it will take years for it to really take effect. Look how long it is taking to effect smoking? It has been 40-50 years now that we have known for a fact that smoking will cause lung cancer and kill you. And it is only in the last 10-15 years that it is finally starting to take hold on the general public. It will be 40-50 plus years for us to educate the general public on proper healthy eating, and even then it will still be a problem to for many.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
"The idea that we should allow our kids to avoid athletics because they are focused on competition and winning is absurd. Guess what, that's the real world. I owe a lot about myself to the fact that I was picked last in dodgeball, repeatedly bashed in the head and continued to get back up to try harder."
I think your problem may have been that you required being bashed on the head several times to motivate you to try harder.
Not all children learn best by being bludgeoned repeatedly.
Personally I find the over emphasis on the importance of sports to the educational process is just one of many reasons our American Educational system is such an absolute joke.
That's just my opinion though, I've never been part of the educational systems of any other countries, so I can't really say whether or not they put their sports team's funding before the funding of their classrooms.
I was curious and happened to have an old package of "maruchan" ramen in my pantry. One package is 400 calories with 16g of fat, 8 of which are saturated fat. (FYI it is also 60% of your daily sodium intake!)
Anyway, you claim a gain of 35lbs over 6 months. That's ~183 days. According to wikipedia, 1lb of fat gain is roughly equal to an excess intake of 3500 calories, meaning that 122,500 calories of fat were gained over the 183 day period.
122,500 calories gained in fat / ~183 days = ~669 calories gained in fat per day. You are claiming a daily intake of only 400 calories from ramen. Clearly, your scenario violates the laws of physics.
Nite_Hawk
I once managed to lose 95 pounds. Kept it off for several years. For me, the trick that broke the barrier was weight lifting. Diet by itself just made me weaker - I kept the fat and lost muscle. Aerobics boosted my energy levels but didn't burn weight. (Of course, I was so heavy that "aerobics" was barely a mile run).
Weight lifting forced my body to add muscle mass which boosted how many calories I burned during a day. The big problem I have now is that I'm getting older and, frankly, lifting and I don't get along as well as we used to...
Clear, Dark Skies
Competition may be frustrating for people who continuously lose, but getting rid of it makes the games boring for everyone. The trick is to segregate them into groups of equivalent skill without singling out anyone into the "loser's league."
Perhaps by having non-conventional or out-of-season sports run concurrently with the vanilla sports. The better athletes seem to prefer the regular events, while the less skilled could simply choose something else if frustrated, always with the excuse, "well I like dodgeball, pickleball, badminton, or curling more than basketball, baseball, football, or boring football (a.k.a soccer)."
Any sports not practiced at home will even the playing field as well, so there's no reason to restrict anyone to any strata.
Anyone who says dodgeball is stupid better not play FPSs.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You mean enriched white bread. Wholegrain wheat bread is the stuff you should be eating.
...).
l
Follow these food intake guidelines:
By Proportion:
* 45% Fat.
* 28% Protein.
* 27% Carbohydrates.
By Calorie:
* 55% Animal Products
* 45% Plant Products.
By Weight:
* 2/3 Plant products
* 1/3 Animal products.
Preferred Carbohydrate Sources:
* Foods with low glycemic load.
* Unprocessed plant products.
* Foods with a low glycemic index.
Non-Preferred Food Items & Ingredients:
* High glycemic index foods.
* Rice, primarily processed white rices.
* Patatos.
* Foods derived from highly processed grains.
* If you can't see the grains don't eat it.
* Mono/Di saccharides (Sugar, Corn syrup,
* Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, fats, and lipids.
* Shortening.
"Always read food labels and choose foods without trans fats. Or - if partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or shortening is on the label - choose foods that have them near the end of the ingredient list (labels list ingredients from most to least). Starting in 2006, FDA has required that all "Nutrition Facts" labels on food list trans fat content. If partially hydrogenated oil is on the label, the food is not trans fat free." http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr/pr083-05.shtm
Excellent, well done. The answer to many of the problems faced by a modern urban society is sitting there, quietly gathering dust in the garage.
I was going to say something similar. The law of conservation of energy doesn't take a nap because it's suddenly about your tubby little kids.
The maths I've seen seem to indicate that your mass will 'seek' towards a value for which the food energy consumed is equal to the energy dissipated. It's a simple integrating process, and it's one which only humans can control. Studies have shown that simply increasing physical activity causes a proportional increase in appetite, so at some point you need to either work out far far more than you could possibly eat, or get some willpower and set your energy input at a sane level.
It's been a long time.
The article says the study reached two conclusions:
1) (And most relevant to the politics) Access to sporting facilities had negligible effect on the activity of children. Children with access to sporting facilities used them, got tired, and were not very active when they got home. Children without access got home and, not having had a chance ot do sporting stuff at school, were more active outside of school. So, basically, the body is wired to get X amount of activity a day, and if it doesn't get it at sporting facilities paid for by the state, will get it after school anyway. Ergo, spending money on sporting facilities doesn't help kids get more excercise.
2) (And this is a specious conclusion) Amount of activity has no bearing on the child's Body Mass Index. They try and make this say that therefore, activity has nothing to do with obesity, but BMI is a body-mass index, not an obesity index. If you have fat, and you exercise, you may very well lose fat and get thinner and not lose any weight, because you also tend to gain muscle when you exercise. so kids who exercise may way the same as kids who don't, but are still probably much less fat.
Now, if the study measured how much FAT the kids had and didn't notice a difference with excercise, then they might be on to something, but they didn't, so they're not.
paintball
Look - Obesity is more dependent on diet than activity levels. This is very well known. You can see this yourself by doing some simple calculations (Slashdotters may like this). First, take a look at how many calories your favorite snack is (maybe a piece of chocolate cake or a Whopper or a whole bag of Doritos). Then, check any site that estimates your calorie consumption by doing some physical activity for a certain period of time. Calculate how long it takes you to excercise enough to burn off that extra snack. Then come back here and read the next paragraph.
What you will have found is that it takes a LOT of physical activity to make up for what most of us consider to be a moderate snack. This is why the AMOUNT OF FOOD that you eat has more bearing on obesity than ACTIVITY LEVELS. However, diet alone doesn't determine your overall health, although it does have a HUGE impact (pun unintentional). Excercise also determines a lot of your health. To be really healthy, you should avoid overeating AND get lots of excercise, just like everyone knows you should. Sure, there are some fat people who are "healthier" than some skinny people. And sure, there are some couch potatoes who are "healthier" than some athletes. But these EXCUSES do not mean that you are justified in either sitting on your lazy butt or eating that cheesecake - people try to twist results like this all the time to say that they're doing perfectly fine the way they are. The take home message for YOU is this:
If I eat better and maintain a reasonable weight, will I be healthier? YES
If I excercise more and maintain cardiovascular fitness and weight-bearing strength, will I be healthier? YES
Don't try to make excuses. Note that we are talking about HEALTH benefits here. I'm not addressing the complications of appearance and self-esteem. That's a whole other can of worms.
This is probably too late for this discussion but anyway.
I got down to 14 stone/196lbs/. I'm 6ft tall. It was dead easy. I stopped eating crap, my diet consisted of a kilo of fruit for breakfast, a baked potato at lunch and a cup of Miso soup in the evening. I stopped drinking booze completely and drank lots of water and little else. I also went to the gym 6 days a week where, initially I walked for 10 minutes, rowed for 10 minutes, did a stepper for 5 but as I got fitter I upped the intensity and time, I still only exercise maybe 40 minutes a day. After I got to about 19 stone, I estimated my VO2 by doing four different tests and taking the average, you would not believe how hard it is to find somewhere to do a gas aspiration test in the UK, I'm still looking. I punched in the VO2 into my heart rate monitor and it would estimate, using my weight, height, VO2 and heart the burnt calories. I burnt Around 500 per day. In 9 months since I started observing my HR, I lost 36 kilos, bang on a kilo per month.
I then stopped, I carried on the diet but the exercise stopped. My weight loss plateaued. I kept a weekly record of my weight (for over a year). For me, the exercise was the difference between losing weight, and staying the same.
I know, from experiance that I lost weight when exercising and didn't when I wasn't exercising. Physics, has alot to do with this.
I was eating twice the normal amount of food and running 12 miles a day. In other words, I did get more exercise. I could have run a marathon. You're telling me that the person next door was in the same shape as I was? Well, no, they weren't. Nobody in the entire school was, really, except the other runners. Back then, I would run a couple miles without even breaking a sweat.
If they aren't working their kids hard enough to get anything extra from the school's sports programs, that might be due to creampuff sports programs, but there is such a thing as exceeding the statistical norm, and most people are capable of doing it if they're given proper encouragement. [and the first step in that process is NOT to tell the class that they're going to be in the same shape, regardless of whether they do the prescribed exercises.]
That is why I make the bold assertion that their conclusion is pure bunk. Perhaps it was stated more accurately in the actual report, but the description of the conclusion in TA is negated by my own life's experience.
I'm appalled that they would even venture to call that a study; they should have looked much more carefully at specific sports. Baseball, for instance, is mainly about sprinting, weight training, pitching, catching, bat swinging. That's a sport that might not require that the players be in very good shape, but if cross country runners, triathaletes, long distance swimmers, etc, were seperated from linebackers, sumo wrestlers, volleyball players, baseball players and ping pong
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
The processed foods that many of us eat appears to be the culprit for many of our current ills, including obesity and diabetes. And overloading our bodies with too much protein is simply doing all kinds of damage in the long run. We simply do not need that much protein, and we get an adequate amount of it from plant-based foods.
Dairy is bad news as well, and should be avoided.
As a father of a vegetarian household, where we've been vegetarian for over 12 years, I must say my kids are healthy as oxes. And it just amazes me how misinformed most people are about diet and nutrition. One of my daughters keeps getting weird questions like, "so where do you get your protein?" Well, duh, every living thing has protein in it!!!!!
All I can say is read the book. This is not a fad book, but a serious scientific study. It does touch on the politics of meat as well, and I happen to agree with some of Campbell's conclusions. But seriously folks! The science is hard to deny.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
And this is not the only thing that this works for. Force us to wear seatbelts and we increase the level of risk taking that we take while driving. Why? Because the enforced reduction of risk through seatbelts allows us to feel relatively safe. And feeling safe, we will take risks elsewhere.
IMHO, this is a perfect example of the hubris of government. And I find it ironic that at the end of the article, it suggests repeating that hubris by regulating the food industry. If we are forced out of bad but convenient food that we freely choose, what consequence will it have? What choice will we make to increase our convenience? Will we choose not to eat at those restaurants because we don't like the taste of the new regulated foods that are available? Will that increase unemployment? Will that result in increased poverty levels? Good grief, these people need to study economics before they start making policy recommendations!
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
This is a pretty good comment overall, but I think at least one point deserves more attention:
The primary way to lose fat is through "cardio" exercise, aka aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, various gym machines like the elliptical or the stair climber, etc.
Cardio exercise is a good way to lose weight, but it's very easy to deceive yourself because the exercise itself often burns off mostly water weight. Believe me, it's fun to get on the scale after a summer run and see you've lost 2 lbs, but it's not something you can do day after day, especially if you don't turn around and hydrate yourself immediately. When doing mild to medium cardio, you actually enter a fat burning phase about 40 minutes into the exercise. If you consume some lightweight carbs during this time (a *bit* of dried fruit, sports drink), you will assist your body in burning the fat. The longer you can hold your body in this phase, the more fat you will burn...i.e. a 90 minute workout will burn more fat than two 45 minute ones.
Also, there are many goals to exercise: burning fat, building muscle, building aerobic and anaerobic capacity, endurance, power, developing/retaining flexibility, improving reflexes, etc. so there are obviously many ways to achieve these goals, so saying "cardio burns fat" is clearly a generalization that overlooks many of the other benefits you could be giving yourself.
In my own experience, I believe that a lot of things have to go just right (diet, heart rate, having plenty of time to spend in "the fat burning zone") to burn lots of fat via cardio, unless you're obese and just walking a few hours a day will do the trick (assuming you correctly cut your caloric intake). On the other hand, strength conditioning, i.e. weight training, will break down muscle fibers that take *loads* of energy to repair and renew. As the OP stated, muscle burns more calories at rest, as well.
There are plenty of reasons to do some basic weight training though: after age 40, your body naturally loses 5% of its muscle mass every ten years (a mass about the size of your bicep). A couple of studies have found that, ignoring ALL other factors (heart disease, weight, etc.), stronger people live longer. Of course, it's usually an indication that they lead a healthy lifestyle, but one study I read suggested that of two men, aged 70+, with the same bp, bmi, weight range, etc., the one that is physically stronger is expected to outlive the other by several years. Sure, that's a wild set of factors to nail down in a proper research study, but it's telling nonetheless. Maybe the stronger ones have better reflexes, so they won't fall as easily, or if they do hit the deck, their bones are harder, and they are much less likely to break a hip, etc.
Personally I've found that since I started *properly* weight training - NOT the bodybuilding sort that's in vogue (complex/compound lifts, no body part targeting...but that's another post entirely) - in addition to the expected benefits, I have been practically injury free across all the sports I do, and that in itself is no small accomplishment for an athlete.
One point about body fat percentage - I think most electrode scales are total crap. They can be highly affected by the hydration of your body, and I don't know anyone that sweats and drinks the same amount every day. Also, on the "athletic" setting it tells me I have 13% (I would be thrilled if that were true at my age and athletic effort) and on the "normal" setting it says 19% or so, which is equally off base. Fact is, I'm somewhere in that range, and I'd like the scale to be able to tell me exactly where I am, not the other way around. A couple glasses of water either way and I can jive the readings for the day. For me, it comes down to eyeballing my love handles - a crude caliper method if you will - and that's a lot more telling on a personal level.