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22/11/2021

Teens Who Sleep Less Eat More Fatty Food
Teens who sleep less than eight hours on a weeknight are more likely to eat a high proportion of fatty foods than teens who get eight or more hours of sleep, according to a new study.

This difference was more pronouced in girls than in boys, and suggests that short sleep duration may increase the risk of obesity by causing small changes in eating habits that can accumulate to alter energy balance, researchers found in the ongoing Cleveland Children's Sleep and Health Study. Two hundred and forty adolescents between the ages of 16 and 19 participated in the study. Teens who slept less than eight hours on weeknights consumed about 2 percent more calories from fats and 3 percent fewer calories from carbohydrates than teens who slept eight hours or more, to the researchers said in a statement. Researchers also found that for each one-hour increase in sleep duration, teens' odds of snacking on a high amount of calories decreased by 21 percent, on average. The teens' sleep habits in the study were monitored by wrist actigraphy, a sensor that is useful in determining sleep patterns. Most teens slept for 7.55 hours each weeknight, and only 34 percent of them slept for eight hours or more. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends teens to get at least nine hours of sleep each night. Even though the diets of girls were found to be more affected by shorter sleep duration than those of boys, more research is needed to determine how gender can modify sleep, stress, eating behaviors and metabolism, the researchers said. The study was published in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Sleep.

22/11/2021

Top Foods Children Choke On
For kids, the food most likely to "go down the wrong pipe" and cause choking is hard candy, a new study finds.

Between 2001 and 2009, more than 16,100 children ages 14 and younger visited the emergency room because they were choking on hard candy, the study found. Overall, nearly 112,000 children visited the emergency department for nonfatal choking related to food during the eight-year study, about 12,400 per year. That means that about 15 percent of all child emergency room visits related to choking on food were due to hard candy.

Other top foods that sent kids to the emergency room include the following:
Meat other than hot dogs: 12,671 visits (12.2 percent)

Bone: 12,496 visits (12 percent)

Fruits and vegetables: 10,075 visits (9.7 percent)

Formula, milk or breast milk: 6,985 visits (6.7 percent)

Seeds, nuts or shells: 6,771 visits (6.5 percent)

Chips, pretzels or popcorn: 4,826 visits (4.6 percent)

Biscuits, cookies or crackers: 3,189 visits (3.1 percent)

Hot dogs: 2,660 visits (2.6 percent)

Bread or pastries: 2,385 visits (2.3 percent)

French fries: 874 visits (0.8 percent)

The majority of children who came to the emergency room because they were choking on food were treated and released, but about 10 percent needed to be hospitalized. Kids who choked on hot dogs or seeds, nuts or shells were more likely to require hospitalization than those who choked on other foods.

The average age of kids treated for nonlethal food choking was about 4.5 years old, and more than half were boys.

The researchers, from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, analyzed information from a national database of emergency-department visits, focusing on choking visits involving food that did not result in death.

Young children may lack the teeth necessary to properly grind food, they still may be learning how to chew and they may have a high activity level, which may make them more likely to choke on food, the researchers said.

Foods that may pose a greater choking risk to children include those that are similar in shape to the child's airway (such as hot dogs), those that are difficult to chew (raw fruits and vegetables) or those that are consumed by the handful (such as seeds and nuts), which may be too much for a child to chew, the researchers said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children ages 5 and younger should not be given hard candies or gum, and that raw fruits and vegetables be cut into small pieces when they are fed to young children.

Children should be supervised while eating, and should never run, walk, play or lie down with food in their mouth, the AAP says. Parents and caregivers should be familiar with techniques to rescue their children if choking does occur.

The AAP also recommends that the Food and Drug Administration take action to label foods that may pose a choking risk to children.

22/11/2021

Sell-By Labels Send Edible U.S. Food to the Dump (Op-Ed)
Peter Lehner is executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). This piece is adapted from post which will appear onthe NRDC blog Switchboard. Lehner contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

No one eats forty percent of the food produced in the United States. That's nearly half of America's food, wasted — not just on plates, but in refrigerators and pantries, in grocery stores and on farms. Much of it perfectly good, edible food — worth $165 billion annually — gets tossed in the trash instead of feeding someone who's hungry.

My colleague, Dana Gunders, has been exploring how, where and why food gets wasted in America, from farm to store to table. One of the more surprising reasons, as she explains in a report released today by NRDC and Harvard Law School, is because of the inconsistent and incoherent way in which food is date labeled.
Those "best-by," "sell-by," and "use-by" dates that you see on food have nothing to do with food safety. They're set by manufacturers, without federal oversight, and most often relate to what manufacturers feel is "peak" quality. The date label on food does not tell you if your food is safe to eat.

22/11/2021

22/11/2021