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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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How Could Unhealthy Diet Affect Children’s Health? According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Prevention and Control), childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years. In the United States, the percentage of obese children aged between 6 and 11 years old increased from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 18 percent in 2012. Similarly, the percentage of obese adolescents aged between 12 and 19 years old increased from 5 percent to nearly 21 percent over the same period. Why does this happen? Health experts attributed the obesity epidemic to sedentary lifestyle and especially unhealthy diet. A recent study revealed that American kids eat excessive amount of salt and sugar and do not eat sufficient amount of fruits and vegetables. Researchers from Northwestern University, Chicago, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Colorado School of Medicine analyzed sample that comprised 8,961 children aged between 2 and 11 years from 2003 to 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. Their findings were published in March 2015’s issue of ‘Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes’. A healthy diet is supposed to include 5 main components: eating 4 and a half cups or more of fruits and vegetables each day; 3 servings of whole grains a day; 2 servings of fish a week; minimal amounts of sugar; and below 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day.
But the survey found that less than 1 percent of the children in the study had 4 or 5 of the main components of a healthy diet and just 3 percent of boys and 2 percent of girls ate enough whole grains daily. In fact, more than 50 percent of children consumed more than the recommend amount of sugar-sweetened beverages. The survey also revealed that less than 10 percent of the kids ate the recommended 4 to 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day and 30 percent were overweight or obese. Most worrying fact is that about 40 percent of the kids already had poor or worrying cholesterol levels. Children generally start with pretty good blood pressure but if they have a horrible diet, it will be most likely to have worsening body mass index (BMI) and cholesterol levels. The researchers stressed that their study comes from a nationally representative group of children, and the findings can be translated to American kids as a whole. And it seems that children in the United States are losing their ideal cardiovascular health status. In 2013, a research conducted by the American Heart Association (AHA) have already indicated that more than 4/5 of American teenagers are at risk from heart disease because of their unhealthy diets. Of the 4,673 Americans aged between 12 and 19, more than 80 percent are classified as having poor diets, with just 1 percent eating the recommended level of healthy foods. Heart disease starts young. Children who are as young as 3 can sometimes have artery-clogging blockages. Ultrasound examinations of children as young as 10 have shown they can have arteries that are already as clogged as those in some middle-aged people. A paper published in 2014 indicated that nearly a third of kids screened at pediatric clinics in Houston had unhealthy cholesterol levels by age 9 to 11. Cholesterol levels, especially the bad cholesterol (LDL, low-density lipoprotein) is closely associated with artery-clogging blockage and heart disease. People who are overweight or obese are at a higher risk of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, stroke and Type-2 diabetes. Overweight and obesity are also linked to increased risk for many types of cancer. Fortunately, some previous studies did show an easy fix. For instance, one study found that young women who had reported eating the most fruits and vegetables in their 20s were 40 percent less likely to have dangerously blocked arteries in their 40s. Other studies also showed that eating a diet loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables, low in saturated fats and low on fatty meat, could dramatically cut the risk of heart disease and stroke.
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