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Morning News

Dr. Paula Elbirt Discusses Obesity in Children

Aired January 9, 2001 - 11:30 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We want to have now more on your children, what they eat, and where they eat it. A study of 91 families found that nearly 50 percent of them left the television on during their meals. In households where children watched TV during meals, those children consumed more red meat, more salty snacks, and had more caffeine.

Joining us from New York is Dr. Paula Elbirt, medical director for Drpaula.com. She is going to give us some more advice and some more information about exactly what this all means.

Good morning and thanks for coming in and talking to us about all of this.

DR. PAULA ELBIRT, DRPAULA.COM: Good morning, thank you.

HARRIS: Let's talk about the indications here. What, then, from this study, can you glean as perhaps the biggest influences over what a child does actually eat?

ELBIRT: Well, the study is welcome, but it's not a surprise. What we see is that American children have, over the last 15 years, increasingly become obese. So that some -- somewhere over 50 percent of American children of school-age -- meaning ages of 6-10 -- fit in to the medical diagnoses of obesity. And we know what obesity leads to, in terms of later-life complications, medical complications, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure. And these same children are the children that the study just talked about that are sitting in front of either television or computer or video games of some sort. They have a very sedentary lifestyle.

There is no doubt that the connection between the two is precise. What we have do is get these kids out, out of the house, and away from the screen. But that's not -- that's easier said than done, obviously.

HARRIS: As I read it here, though, you see that there are two really big influences over what children decide to eat. And one of them is the media. How do you see that connection?

ELBIRT: Well, actually, a study that looked at what makes a child choose what they will eat and what they won't eat, done in the middle '90s was really very illustrative of this; that they really want to eat what they see on television. And that they will shy away, or turn down completely, the foods that are placed on the plate around the food that they want, and just go for the food that they have seen on the television.

HARRIS: Like when you say see on the television, do mean like the commercials? or what they see other people eating or what?

ELBIRT: Commercials -- yes, both. They will see kids in sit- coms eating something, and they will want that; or they will see it in commercials.

There are kid who will insist on the cereal type, for instance, who have never tasted the cereal, will turn down four other choices that they also have never tried, but know that they are going to want the one that they saw in the commercial.

And that can be a real problem since most of the time, the choices that are shown on TV commercials are higher in fat, higher in additives, pesticides, everything, but basically they are less nutritionally of value than foods that a parent, for instance, have to prepare from scratch. And that is a part of the problem too.

HARRIS: But still, I am assuming that most of this still boils down to what parents make available to the children in the house to eat in the first place, correct?

ELBIRT: Well, yes, but we are all affected by the times, and the media is one thing that affects us. And so does our lifestyle. We work hard, long hours, and it's hard to take the time to prepare food.

But this same study showed that the second, or close to the media as an influence on what children will eat, is what their parents eat; not what they tell you to do eat, what they eat, and how they eat it. So, fast-food parents are going to have fast-food children. Even after they have reached the age where they can make that decision for themselves.

And so a parent modeling good eating habits is really key, and about the only defense that we have these days against increasing childhood obesity.

HARRIS: Classic case of do as I do, and not do as I say do.

ELBIRT: Exactly.

HARRIS: Did you find any difference here between age groups in children, for instance, did you find that with younger kids that parents were a bigger influence than, say, the media or peer pressure or whatever?

ELBIRT: Well, the study looked at school-age children. It looked at children between the ages of 6 and 10. But we know that children above that age are also deeply influenced by what they are -- in fact even more influenced by outside information, meaning media information, peer group pressure, than they are by their parent's behavior. So your real focus, for parents to really make a decision in their children's ultimate lifestyle and health for -- maybe forever is to make that impact when they are young, especially during the school- age years when kids are cognitively learning about nutrition in school but it has no impact, if the parent is not modeling at home, unless, you know, you really, really have a change in the way the parent lives their lifestyle.

HARRIS: There you go. Common sense advice there. We thank you very much for it this morning, Dr. Paula Elbirt. Take care. We will talk to you later on.

ELBIRT: You are very welcome.

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