Weight Matters

At holiday time, kids face their own challenges when it comes to eating right

Newsday, December 19, 2005

PAT BURON

Susan Satz cringed at Thanksgiving when her daughter barely touched her turkey but reached for more stuffing and mashed potatoes.

Satz, a tax accountant from Bayville, N.Y., says she's trying to help her 9-year-old make wise food choices. That can be a challenge, she admits, when neither of you likes to eat breakfast and your child's favorite foods are pizza, pasta and mac and cheese.

Amanda is an active child - she likes to hoola hoop, roller skate, walk with her mother on the beach and spend afternoons at a Boys and Girls Club. Even so, her mother's concern stems, in part, from her own experience.

"I grew into a fat kid who grew into a fat adult," says Satz, 50, who in 1989 shed 93 pounds in Weight Watchers - and has kept most of it off.

"I'm not worried about it affecting her in the short term, but I am concerned about the long term," she says. "I think parents have to do more. Years ago, they didn't know any more, but now we do know better."

With medical professionals sounding the alarm about rising rates of childhood obesity, Satz is one of many parents more worried than ever about their kids establishing healthier eating habits and getting more physical activity. Their concerns can become magnified during and after the holidays, when almost everybody is tempted to overindulge in food.

They have reason for concern: According to the latest statistics from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 percent of American children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are overweight. Another 15 percent are at risk of becoming overweight. Experts say a child who is overweight is at greater risk of becoming an overweight or obese adult.

Parents can teach children and teens about good health and nutrition without browbeating them or obsessing about every morsel they ingest, or turning the holidays - and every other day - into a horror, pediatricians, dietitians, fitness trainers, psychologists and others agree.

For starters, don't deprive yourself - or your child - of foods that mark the holidays and other special occasions like birthdays, says Robyn Flipse, a registered dietitian.

"It's so important not to look at the holidays as a time to start policing behavior or doing anything different," she says. "There are 340-odd days where we should be practicing good eating habits and getting regular physical activity. Nobody got fat because of Thanksgiving or Halloween or Valentine's Day."

In fact, depending on several factors, including your child's age, gender, body type, height and family history, a few extra pounds may not be cause for alarm.

But if you are concerned that your child is overweight or obese or heading in that direction, consult your pediatrician or family doctor, suggests Dr. Marc S. Jacobson, a professor of pediatrics at the Center for Atherosclerosis Prevention at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park on Long Island.

"In the last 10 years, the number of kids who are overweight has grown dramatically ... and it's getting worse," Jacobson says. "It's not just a cosmetic problem. It's a medical and health problem."

Parents should educate themselves about obesity and establish good habits now that will carry into the new year - and beyond, Flipse says. Be sure, she says, that your child gets a good night's sleep; has breakfast every morning; has time for active play; and eats dinner with the family, as often as possible, away from the TV and other distractions. Kitchen time, where kids help their parents prepare meals, also helps them learn about different foods and not feel they have to rely on fast food or commercially prepared food, she says.

"The people who feel comfortable in the kitchen tend to be more adventurous eaters," Flipse says. "They tend to try new things. If you don't get to see how foods are put together or flavors arise from the blending of foods, you are suspicious of everything."

If parents are worried that their child is eating too many sugary or fattening snacks, Tom Farley, a pediatrician and professor of public health in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Tulane University, encourages them to turn their homes into junk-food-free zones.

"Rather than tell your kids, 'Don't eat this,' if you don't buy junk food and bring it into your home, they won't eat it," says Farley, author of "Prescription for a Healthy Nation: A New Approach to Improving Our Lives by Fixing Our Everyday World" (Beacon, $18).

But don't stop there, says Farley, who advocates full-scale social change, including parents lobbying schools to remove junk food from vending machines and TV networks to pull junk-food ads during children's programming.

But it's also important for parents to teach their kids how to take care of their own bodies, says Donna Fish, a Manhattan psychotherapist and author of "Take the Fight Out of Food: How to Prevent and Solve Your Child's Eating Problems (Atria, $14). "If you don't help them do this themselves, then they won't know how to eat when they are at other kids' houses or when they grow older," she says.

One of the most important things parents can do is to practice what they preach, modeling the good eating habits and physical activity they want to see in their children, experts agree.

"What I tell parents first and foremost is to get their own stuff together about food and what and how you feel about your own body," says Abby Ellin, a Manhattan resident and author of "Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs in on Living Large, Losing Weight and How Parents Can (and Can't) Help" (Public-Affairs, $25). "Are they crazy-thin people manically exercising or couch potatoes and preaching something else? ... Your kids know what you're doing."