From my point of view, and perhaps this is not ideal, but I was just thrilled to see an article “spin” results (if that is indeed what it did) in a way that is not vilifying to fat people. Reporting spins results on obesity all the time and 99.9999999% of the time it’s in the “fat people are ignorant evil pigs with no self-control and fat kids are disgusting lazy blobs” vein, so imperfect though it may be, it’s nice to see some reporting that acknowledges ambiguous results from a study of this kind.

And I’m sure everybody knows about the grocery shopping problem – lack of stores carrying fresh vegetables, etc.

@spacedcowgirl,

I agree. And, as you said, “… therefore we know the whole story before we even start,” was really the point I was trying to make about how the research was presented at KansasCity.com. To me, they were suggesting a conclusion from the start.

I am passionate about data, statistics, and research (I know, strange in my own right). For research such as this, where there seems to be a counterintuitive result, I like to put on the scuba gear and take a deeper dive.

As I said earlier, I absolutely believe that there are people who cannot control their weight. I am definitely not one of those who believes everybody who eats less and exercises more will definitely lose weight, or that everyone should even strive for that goal. I don’t want you all to think that I am in that bucket.

I was more trying to say that this research doesn’t necessarily support a hypothesis that there is another underlying cause of obesity in the group of children studied. Based on how the data are presented in the article, the I think the authors go out of their way to walk both sides of the fence and hedge their findings on both sides.

They really did not take a stance at all other than to say that when these children did eat, they ate bad things.

The authors simply, IMHO, did not go far enough to draw any concrete conclusion as to the cause of the obesity in this group of children.

What could they have done better?

The results of the study aren’t changed for sure. There are still 44 percent of the children studied consuming less than 1,400 calories (assuming accurate recollection on the children’s part, which I am willing to assume), and 33 percent were obese (no recollection needed, that is a fact).

There is no evidence that any of the obese children were in the underfed group. The study simply does not say how many of the 33 percent obese were in the 44 percent underfed group; and it also does not state how many of the 89 percent below acceptable fitness levels were in THAT group.

I was really hoping that was included in the main journal article. I think that information would have been the most interesting part and would have allowed us to start drawing some concrete conclusions.

Unfortunately the authors did not show us how all of the descriptive stats overlapped.

Your point about the physical fitness as it relates to calorie expenditure is a good one, and one I fundamentally agree with. The research could have gone further and attempted to measure daily caloric expenditure.

However, the problem is with the way the research was spun (IMO) at KansasCity.com. That news piece seems to imply that the researches uncovered something unusual in that childhood obesity is not related to net calorie expenditure, the onus of proof shifts to the researcher, not the reader.

It is like a study saying that gas powered cars absorb more carbon dioxide than it produces. It would be up to the researcher to prove that it is true, rather than the reader’s to prove that it is not.

I apologize for the long post. Like I said, I am actually on the double yellow lines on this particular issue; I believe that people are individuals and should first strive to happy in their own bodies, no matter what that body looks like.

Like I said, I am passionate about data and statistics are research, so I tend to get passionate about how the results are interpreted, That said, if I have overstepped my bounds in my way, I definitely apologize.

I’m sure inactivity is a factor here, but I also don’t know what the researchers consider normal/acceptable in terms of physical fitness, or whether that correlates to the activity level assumed by the recommended daily caloric intake for that age group back whenever it was developed. I’d have to know for sure that the kids weren’t meeting the fitness level originally conceived when the dietary guidelines were established in order to agree that this is necessarily significant. There are just too many assumptions out there about “kids are obviously way fatter than they used to be and are obviously eating too much crap and obviously not exercising enough, therefore we know the whole story before we even start.” I question all of those assumptions.

Before I comment on the article itself, I want to preface it by saying that I STRONGLY agree that some people are predisposed to being (or naturally, as Elizabeth put it above) overweight. Unfortunately, after reading the actual Journal Article, the data collected in this case does not support that notion as strongly as KansasCity.com would lead us to believe.

The study, “Diabetes Risk, Low Fitness, and Energy Insufficiency Levels among Children from Poor Families,” goes much farther than just looking at macronutrient and caloric intake; it also looks extensively at fitness levels.

The data showed that only 11.1% of the children had acceptable fitness levels.

Fitness was measured using a “step test,” where basically the change in heart over baseline after stepping up and down onto a small stool for five minutes.

There are a couple of interesting observations in the “Discussion” section of the article; I will paste a couple of quotes below (with my commentary in () after each quote):

“There are several possibilities to explain the food insufficiency and obesity paradox. Individuals not having enough food at certain time periods may engage in binge eating or compromise the nutritional quality of their diets when food becomes available resulting in being overweight. Binge eating may promote fat accumulation due to the dramatic rise in postprandial lipid, glucose, and insulin levels. Following periods of fasting, the liver is primed to synthesize lipids and increase fat storage capacity.”

(this goes directly to some of the comments above, about how binging followed by fasting often triggers a fat storage mechanism)

“A second limitation was the use of children’s self assessment of dietary intake. Inaccurate reporting has been shown among populations from different age, sex, ethnicity, culture, education, social class, and nationality regardless if food records, dietary recalls, food frequency questionnaires, food weighed, and cafeteria menus were used. That study participants worldwide knowingly or subconsciously systematically misreport their dietary intake and that energy intake is consistently and significantly in opposite direction to BMI and body fat appears all too coincidental.”

(the children in this study were asked to recall everything they ate the previous day, and previous studies of suggested, basically, the higher the BMI or BF%, then the more likely the person is to underestimate their food intake)

“Could obesity in children be more closely related to low physical activity and low micronutrient intake than to excessive energy intake? Children in our study had low fitness levels and low calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and folate dietary intake. The literature showing the relationship between inactivity and obesity is extensive…”

(I think that based on the data in this study, we cannot rule out the possibility. The dietary recommendations are based on a normal (acceptable) level of physical fitness, and the data here suggests that the vast majority of the children studied did not meet that standard. The “calories out” side of the equation is at least as off kilter as the “calories in” side).

So, that is the summary of the article. Hopefully it was helpful. It is just disappointing to me that KansasCity.com would put a certain spin on a scientific study without actually reading what the authors said. I would be interested to know what you all think…