Teens' Hearts May Pay for Poor Dietary Habits

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Heart Disease in Kids? Fat Chance -- Literally

Teens' Hearts May Pay for Poor Dietary Habits

 

By Jeff Levine

WebMD Washington Bureau Chief

 

March 13, 2000 (Anaheim, Calif.) -- The typical adolescent diet consisting

largely of high-fat junk food is likely to send a young person into the

emergency room as an adult. And Latino youths are particularly guilty of bad

eating habits, say researchers presenting their findings here Monday at the 49th

Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology.

 

" These young people are eating a horrendous diet, which makes them very

susceptible to heart disease when they grow up, " says Albert Sanchez, DrPH, of

the Pacific Health Education Center in Bakersfield, Calif. Sanchez and his

colleagues studied 249 high school students in a community about 50 miles north

of Los Angeles.

 

The group of 13- to 18-year-olds came from three different schools -- one

Latino, one located in a predominately blue-collar area, and the other from a

Seventh Day Adventist community whose strong religious values affect diet and

health. The kids were checked for the well-known risk factors for heart disease

including weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol level.

 

In addition, scientists performed ultrasound scans of the carotid artery in the

students. The thickness of the large vessel supplying blood to the brain is an

early indicator of hardening of the arteries, called atherosclerosis.

 

The investigators found that the more junk food the adolescents ate, the worse

their arteries looked. " In fact, we found that in 11% of the people [there were]

abnormalities which we would normally expect ... in 40-year-olds, " says study

co-author Jacques D. Barth, MD, PhD, of Prevention Concepts Inc.

 

In the study, the Seventh Day Adventist children had virtually no risk factors

for heart disease; the teens in the blue-collar white high school had some, but

the Latinos had the worst risk profiles. Overall, 80% of the students had too

much fat in their diet, and 49% consumed too much cholesterol. Eleven percent

had hypertension. A high body mass index -- that is, weight adjusted for height

-- in these students also correlated with having more risk factors.

 

" We are, at this point, appalled that [80% of] these young people are eating ...

this way, " says Sanchez. Both Sanchez and Barth singled out school lunches as

being primarily responsible for the poor dietary habits of teens.

 

The researchers also say that the issue isn't just better nutrition but sending

the appropriate cultural messages to various ethnic communities. " We've got to

target them in their language, in their culture. We're not going to sell with

potatoes. Let's sell them with beans and tortillas, " says Sanchez.

 

In a related study presented at the conference, researchers from Brazil found

that 211 overweight children who had blood pressure abnormalities were more

likely to have those same heart risk factors than normal kids when checked 10

years later. Again, the researchers say that the message is that heart disease

prevention starts early in life.

 

As presenter Andrea Brandao, MD, of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, puts

it, " You can change the diet, exercise habits ... these are the things that can

favorably modify the whole scenario. "

 

webmd.com/content/article/1728.55652

 

 

 

" When your children are adults, and in the prime of their lives, who's going to

tell them that their clogged arteries, malignancies, and degenerating bodies

could so easily have been prevented with the knowledge you possessed when they

were young? " Charles Attwood, MD

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