Kids Are Eating Less - Not More?

I also think it might be a matter of meal frequency. I think a lot of children today skip breakfast and eat large lunches and dinners -- which would encourage weight gain. Previous children might have split up their food more over the day.

Rachel,

For weight gain, the number of meals doesn't matter. The professor looked at calorie intake.

You may be confusing this with recommendations that you eat more meals to lose weight: the rationale for that recommendation is that this will cause you to eat fewer calories overall because you will never be famished and go bingeing.

Mark: Though that's one reason to eat frequent meals, it is also the least significant. Your metabolism is like a spinning top. Each time you eat or exercise, you spin the top faster. You eat frequently because it gives a great metabolic boost. In addition, your body looks towards your muscles for food if you don't eat frequently. This is why bodybuilders who are bulking will eat 6 times a day, even though they have no need to restrict calories. Quite the opposite; some of them have to eat so much it makes them sick at first.

Ryan,

"Spinning top"? I take it you didn't get this theory from a reputable textbook?

If you're saying that frequent meals cause your metabolism to become less efficient, to a degree that is nontrivial from a weight loss point of view, that's not true.

Many popular nutrition, weight loss, and body building theories depend on the idea that the efficiency of your metabolism can change. It makes for great infomercials. But mainstream scientists do not support it.

The most common way such theories develop is when some research uncovers minor, fraction-of-a-percent effect, and through the "telephone game" of web sites and popular books the basic idea is passed on, omitting the fact that the magnitude of the effect is such that it is of no practical use.

Mark: I believe it, since it took me from maintaining or gaining weight on 2800 calories a day to losing 2 pounds of fat a week on 3500 calories a day. I suppose it's possible that I just expend more calories because I feel I have a constant stream of energy.

Do you believe that "a calorie is just a calorie" too?

Mark: To further what I said before, I do understand what you're getting at. However, if you only draw on "reputable textbooks" and "mainstream scientists", you're only going to get half of the picture. I used to do the same thing.

If you believe that metabolic efficiency is constant, then would you expect the same results from six 500 calorie meals versus one 3000 calorie meal a day? Also, if you took someone maintaining weight on 3000 calories a day and started feeding them 500 a day, would you expect the body to burn 3000 calories a day forever after?

When you eat 'Crap' like processed foods, a calorie can go a long way in creating obesity.

Refined Carbs, Trans Fat, Allergens, Preservatives etc.

These things ensure that our kids are not eating a diet as close to nature as possible!

A lot of kids don't eat real breakfasts anymore either. That could be a problem, as kids will eat candy, pop tarts, soda, juice, etc. for breakfast and even though a candy bar may have fewer calories than bacon and eggs, it also has no nutrients and your body just feels hungry again later. Pair that with the fact that most parents do indeed feed their kids all kinds of processed crap...refined carbs, mac and cheese, hot dogs, sugared cereal, candy, juice boxes, etc. and you can see why kids are getting more obese. Not to mention that kids are supposed to be energy machines. I was a very active kid and my parents encouraged it...I was told to bike outside, jump rope, etc. to "wear myself out". Most kids nowdays just sit in front of their Xbox and computers and don't exercise much at all.

Exercise and meal skipping is a big problem
also poverity is an issue as well as family meals.

Mark and Ryan,
there is significant proof of metabolism increasing due to meal frequency. Whatever "reputable" means to you, there is is also REAL WORLD results reported by bodybuilders, atheletes and everyday people like you and me. This is much more indicative of real evidence then what the defacto myth might be. But if you really need "reputable", I hope that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is good enough.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/81/1/16
Additionaly, if your really a glutton for punishment, and like reading overly detailed scientific papers, you can google for "meal frequency and metabolism" and get a whole lotta information.

In my own experience, having lost 22Kg in 4 months, I ate double as much as I did before losing weight. But I also went to gym 5 times a week. I ate 6 times a day.
It seems the process of eating small amounts regularly through the day PLUS training at the gym transforms the metabolic process positively. Since losing the weight two years ago I have not been to gym and have only put on 2Kg. And I think that's because fundamentally my body changed the way it deals with food.

I don't believe this.

I've monitored a lot of friends' food diaries (of all ages), and it has become very clear that people do not report what they eat honestly. How was the study done? My guess would be parents reporting what their kids eat, or the older children telling their parents, and the parents noting it down. This sort of monitoring is notoriously unreliable, and people's memories are incredibly bad, especially when it comes to poor diet choices (e.g. soft drinks, fatty snacks, junk food etc.). You can't also underestimate the amount adults want the researchers to believe that their kids eat better than they really do, and therefore the parents 'tweak' the facts just a bit here and there.

All my observations (watching people eat, watching people feed kids, watching sales figures of snacks, watching what people buy at supermarkets) tell me the exact opposite - people of *all ages* (especially childen) are eating more and more. Not only more calories, but bigger portions, and more often. They're underestimating the size of their meals and the calorie content, and 'forgetting' to write things down when they are asked to keep food diaries.

Leanne,

You may think all overweight people are lyers, but unless we can prove this, it's only theory.

lowcarb dave,

What does this mean "lyers" and "proof of being lyers"
Overweight people jotting down their calorie intake is very unlikely, that is why they are overweight in the first place. Yes, of course, they might have started to keep track recently because they looked in the mirror, or drove to a nutritionist, but ultimately we can safely say that those who are fat became that way over time due to their lack of responsiblity on healthy eating and lack of exercise.

Nothing needs to be proven/ They aren't necessarily "lying" The association that the overweight don't keep track of what they eat is just something that comes along with the package.

This is right on the money as exercise will help keep our bodies healthy and in the long run will guide people to healthier eating.

Kids are eating less food because they are exercising less. Its pretty obvious.

I am only 28 years old and I clearly remember when we used to spend all our lives out and about on our pushbikes or playing football in the park. Neither myself nor any of my friends were obese and only VERY occasionally would you see a VERY obese child at school. In the last 20 years, the issue of obesity in the UK has skyrocketed. Education on nutrition, poor parenting and embarrasing lack of governmental legislation on food products are the top causes. We are now facing a retrospective uphill battle because of lack of forethought.

Nowadays, parents are so negligent, they do not care that their children play xbox 24/7 at the weekends or immediately after school (or homework, if they are even remotely strict). They will then save their own time/energy giving their kids unhealthy processed "crap" , if this was 100 years ago I would suggest taking their children away and neutering them for such behaviour.

I also need to comment on the above:

"You may be confusing this with recommendations that you eat more meals to lose weight: the rationale for that recommendation is that this will cause you to eat fewer calories overall because you will never be famished and go bingeing"

The rationale whereby more frequent meals will cause less bingeing is an extremely minimal percentage of the actual benefit of regular meals. While it is true to a certain extent for most people, its largely irrelevant when measured next to the biological benefit, also its possible to eat MUCH more calories over a 24 hour period in the form of regular meals with the same level of exercise from less calories from fewer meals and achieve better lean mass gains/fat loss as a result.

The bodys metabolism IS like a spinning top, the more regularly you feed it, the faster the metabolism will "spin". If you feed less regularly, the metabolism will naturally slow and convert as much food as possible to fat as it thinks you are starving, whether you are 500lbs or 50lbs , there is no cheating the "preservation" reflex of the body without unnatural drugs.

Good health and a long future to you all.

Ryan said:
Mark: Though that's one reason to eat frequent meals, it is also the least significant. Your metabolism is like a spinning top. Each time you eat or exercise, you spin the top faster. You eat frequently because it gives a great metabolic boost. In addition, your body looks towards your muscles for food if you don't eat frequently. This is why bodyb[...]

rachel it does matter what you eat because it effects your wait