Food Politics

Umm… is this an academic group of and for pediatricians, or has it been co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry? And given the way the various Child Protective Service agencies have been going, why not have them force the parents to give the kids a healthy diet on pain of… everything else they’ve been doing to wrest the kids from the parents?

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Just shaking my head in disgust.

Imagine how much cheaper it would be to eliminate the fake food from kids’ diets and instead feed them whole, unprocessed foods. But that’s got to be a big stretch for the medical community, which still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that we are what we eat.

What a Pandora’s box this will be.
It absolutely would be preferable to get the families to adjust the diet and exercise for the child and family to modify the risk factors/weight/diabetes/cholesterol of these children. But, after practicing medicine for almost 2 decades, I can tell you the number of families willing to do this is astoundingly small. I wish I had better news, but many of these children have parents who have been unwilling to modify their own lifestyle choices, so getting them to modify the behaviors for the whole family is just not likely to happen on a large scale basis. When we attempt to have families modify the child’s diet, we routinely meet with strong resistance. Common excuses are it will upset the child, it is too much work/time, it is too expensive.
That said, it also is concerning to me to start the statin drugs on small children…I just have not seen great studies yet regarding the safety of these drugs in children.
What we do know, however, is that most adults eat and exercise like what they did as children, unless they have had a great motivation to change, which is rare. Thus, I see the great importance of continued emphasis on school health and physical fitness programs, school nutrition programs, and social pressures on food manufacturers and restaurant chains to modify their offerings to improve the nutrition and activity levels.

What a Pandora’s box this will be.
It absolutely would be preferable to get the families to adjust the diet and exercise for the child and family to modify the risk factors/weight/diabetes/cholesterol of these children. But, after practicing medicine for almost 2 decades, I can tell you the number of families willing to do this is astoundingly small. I wish I had better news, but many of these children have parents who have been unwilling to modify their own lifestyle choices, so getting them to modify the behaviors for the whole family is just not likely to happen on a large scale basis. When we attempt to have families modify the child’s diet, we routinely meet with strong resistance. Common excuses are it will upset the child, it is too much work/time, it is too expensive.
That said, it also is concerning to me to start the statin drugs on small children…I just have not seen great studies yet regarding the safety of these drugs in children.
What we do know, however, is that most adults eat and exercise like what they did as children, unless they have had a great motivation to change, which is rare. Thus, I see the great importance of continued emphasis on school health and physical fitness programs, school nutrition programs, and social pressures on food manufacturers and restaurant chains to modify their offerings to improve the nutrition and activity levels.

Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to hit the send button twice. Maybe moderator can delete one of those duplicate entries?

is there any doubt that these children can have managable cholesterol with a change of habits? maybe it’s their parents that need the drugs….

When do they go off them? Do they stay on statins for 40, 50, 60 years?

Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s a boon for drug companies.

Marion asked … who will pick up the tab? I think insurance premiums and/or taxes will rise for everyone.

The issue of who will pick up the tab is probably a larger issue than immediately meets the eye. Yes, the monthly cost per prescription is high, although as these drugs come off patent, generic versions will become more available. But, the larger, unseen cost is who will pay for the cardiovascular disease treatment that inevitably will arise in people who have ignored their body weight/fitness/diabetes/cholesterol their entire lives? US society has not yet come to grips with the idea that a carefully chosen diet is not a form of imprisoment or punishment, but a joyful way to improve the odds of a healthier, longer life. We all will pay and are currently paying, millions of dollars each year for the care of atherosclerotic vascular disease in the form of heart care and stroke care and care of legs threatened by clogged arteries, and even in some men, the care of erectile dysfunction. We all pay for these things in the form of insurance premiums, taxes to support Medicare and Medicaid, and higher charges at hospitals and clinics to cover the cost of care that doesn’t get paid by anybody.
So, we can continue to pay for the very expensive, painful, not always successful back end treatment, or we could decide as a society that we value preventive care enough to make it a personal and national priority. The most successful, least expensive form of preventive care in this case is…you guessed it…a carefully chosen diet and regular exercise. So, let’s focus on putting our money where it gets results in the private sector and on commercial revisions of product offerings and advertising. Let’s get children and families to make this a priority, and there will be far fewer children or adults needing expensive intervention. Some of the persnal revisions could be very simple. For starters, I don’t know why commercial milk production is so focused on making whole milk. Very few US residents older than 2 years really need the extra fat present in whole milk. The vast majority of school age children in USA could do well on skim milk instead of whole milk. Yet, many schools and families still serve whole milk. This is one example of an easy adjustment that could be made at very small expense.

This is so creepy.

I hope at the very least that if docs are prescribing statins to kids who haven’t even entered puberty that they’re being enrolled in a study, so that we can track the outcomes.

Officially, heart attacks have gone into Darwinian time. Remember when this was an old man’s disease?