Weight bias may harm obese children

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The stigma that society attaches to obesity can cause children immediate, and possibly lasting, harm, according to a research review.

Overweight children and teens are commonly teased or ostracized by their peers, and sometimes treated differently by teachers and even parents. This, the review shows, can lead to low self-esteem, poor school performance, avoidance of physical activity and, in the most serious cases, depression and suicide.

Research has long demonstrated the weight bias that heavy children face. In a classic 1961 study, 640 subjects between 10 and 11 years old were shown six pictures of other children their age: one child was overweight; one was normal-weight; and four had some form of physical disability.

When the study participants were asked to rank the children in the order of whom they would like to be friends with, they ranked the overweight child last.

Read more . . .

Study Suggests That Sugar Should Not Be Excluded From Slimming Diets

New study challenges conventional thinking that high carbohydrate, low fat slimming plan should contain little or no added sugar (sucrose).

A team of scientists at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh has found that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet (containing sucrose) combined with physical activity achieved the greatest health benefits in overweight subjects. The study, which will be published in the August issue of International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, provides evidence that the exclusion of sucrose, as is normally advocated in a weight loss diet, is not necessary to achieve weight reduction. In fact, the palatability of sucrose may even help dieters stick to their eating plans.

Read more . . .

Obesity link to high blood pressure has weakened

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - It seems that the association between body mass index (BMI) and high blood pressure or hypertension has decreased since 1989, researchers say. The finding suggests that obesity may not have as much of an impact on heart-related disease as previously thought.

"High blood pressure is a leading cause of the global burden of disease," Dr. Pascal Bovet, of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues write in the medical journal Epidemiology. "The prevalence of hypertension, and of several other conditions (including diabetes), is considered to be linked to the worldwide epidemic of obesity."

The researchers examined trends in blood pressure and BMI over a 15-year interval in the Seychelles. Their analysis was based on two independent surveys conducted in 1989 and 2004 using representative samples of the population between the ages of 25 and 64 years.

There was a slight decrease in average blood pressure between 1989 and 2004 in both men and women. The prevalence of high blood pressure changed little during this time -- from 45 to 44 percent in men and from 34 to 36 percent in women.

The percentage of people who were overweight, defined as a BMI of 25 or more, increased from 39 percent to 60 percent between 1989 and 2004.

Read more . . .