Nutrition and Obesity

Dr. Beth Dawson-Hahn (left) and Dr. Anisa Ibrahim (right) study refugee children and nutrition.

Dr. Anisa Ibrahim was 6 in 1993 when her family came to Seattle from Somalia, driven from their country by civil war. In the beginning, everything about their new country was exciting and confusing — especially the supermarket.

“We were used to going to the market every day to buy fresh food,” recalls Ibrahim, now a third-year resident in pediatrics at Seattle Children’s. “It was hard to transition to buying bags and boxes of food in bulk.”

Foods the family relied on back home — like goat and guava — were not readily available. And snacks Ibrahim’s classmates pulled out of their lunchboxes — like cheese and Chex mix — were completely unfamiliar.

Unlike some refugees, Ibrahim and her siblings were healthy and well-nourished when they arrived. And thanks to her mom’s skill at cooking and adaptation, says Ibrahim, they stayed that way as they learned their way around the new food landscape.

As a doctor, Ibrahim wants to ensure other families can do the same. That’s why she carved out time during residency to work with Dr. Beth Dawson-Hahn, a pediatrician and research fellow in the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, who is studying refugee children and nutrition. Read full post »

Lydia digs in.

Last April, at the age of 12, Lydia Vaughan felt hungry for the first time.

The new sensation – along with support from her family and a team of specialists at Seattle Children’s – helped her learn to do in two weeks what she had never done before: put food in her mouth and swallow it. Read full post »

When it comes to the holiday season, sugar is everywhere, particularly in desserts and holiday candy. But did you know that sugar is also added to many everyday foods, including soups and yogurt?

“Many people are unaware of just how pervasive added sugar is in our foods,” said Dr. Mollie Grow, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “It isn’t just cookies and soda, it’s being added to many foods that most people wouldn’t consider as sweets.”

The result: the average American adult is consuming three times more sugar than is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) – 76.7 grams per day versus the recommended 25 grams per day, according to a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“The problem with sugar is that it presents a variety of risks to our health,” said Grow. “Some are more obvious, in the sense that more sugar means more calories which can contribute to weight gain. Weight gain leads to obesity, and can bring along many health problems like diabetes. But an excess amount of sugar also affects our long term health by altering our metabolism and causing inflammation.”

Read full post »

Dr. Mogomotsi Matshaba, a clinician and researcher at the Botswana-Baylor Children’s Clinical Center of Excellence in Gaborone, Botswana.

Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s mission to prevent, treat and eliminate childhood disease extends far beyond the Pacific Northwest or even the United States. Researchers like Dr. Jason Mendoza, of the institute’s Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development, are advocating for vulnerable patients all over the world. Mendoza recently led a global health research study in Botswana, published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, to find out if inadequate access to food, also called food insecurity,  might be associated with worse health outcomes of HIV-positive children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Studying patients with the greatest need

HIV is a major public health problem in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2012, there were 3.3 million children worldwide, under the age of 15, living with HIV. Of those, 2.9 million were in Sub-Saharan Africa. Botswana has one of the highest HIV rates of countries in this region, with 23% of adults (ages 15 to 49) infected. Additionally, from 2010 to 2012, 27.9% of people in Botswana did not have physical or economic access to enough nutritious food to maintain a healthy, productive lifestyle. Read full post »

From left: Dr. Jason Mendoza, Gov. Jay Inslee, West Seattle Elementary School principal Vicki Sacco and vice proncipal.

Gov. Jay Inslee joined staff from Seattle Children’s Research Institute this morning as they lead a group of West Seattle children in a “walking school bus.”

A walking school bus is an organized group of children who walk to school together each day while supervised by an adult. Jason Mendoza, MD, MPH, is leading a study in partnership with Seattle Public Schools, to determine whether obesity can be prevented with activities that were common during eras when obesity was less prevalent.

“Decades ago children were more likely to walk to school and obesity rates were much lower,” Mendoza said. “I want to find out whether encouraging children to walk or ride their bike to school might increase their overall physical activity.”

Inslee joined this morning’s walk to West Seattle Elementary to show his support of the program and encourage kids to stay active. The governor is supporting walking to school as part of his “Healthiest Next Generation” initiative. Read full post »

Big changes could soon be coming to grocery stores across the U.S., but for those who don’t pay attention to the black and white nutrition label located on the back of food and beverage packages, the change might not seem very drastic.

Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed giving Nutrition Facts labels a makeover, a change Michelle Obama, an advocate for preventing childhood obesity, says “will make a big difference for families all across this country.” The tweaks are intended to help consumers make more informed decisions about what they put into their bodies. The proposed Nutrition Facts label, if approved, will be the first new look the label has received in over 20 years. Read full post »

More than one third of children and adolescents are obese or overweight, and more and more families are coming to Jason Mendoza, MD, MPH, for advice on how to help their kids lose extra pounds. But obesity treatments can be difficult to complete and are often expensive. Mendoza is testing a new approach that aims to prevent obesity using ideas from eras when obesity was uncommon.

“I’m looking at whether getting children to walk or ride their bikes to school can increase children’s physical activity and reduce their risk of obesity,” said Mendoza, a principal investigator in the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and associate professor at the University of Washington.

Read full post »

Kirsten Thompson in the new garden

With a nationwide spotlight on fighting childhood obesity since obesity prevalence among kids and teens in the U.S. has almost tripled, it’s important we find ways to instill healthy lifestyles in today’s youth to prevent them from developing health issues down the road.

At Seattle Children’s, dietitian Kirsten Thompson found a unique way to teach kids and their families about making healthy choices by transforming the hospital’s old helipad into a teaching garden for patients and families.

Thompson, whose master’s thesis was about gardening with kids, began looking for a place to plant a teaching garden when she joined Children’s in 2008. The opportunity finally arrived this spring when the Building Hope expansion was completed and the helipad moved to a site near the new Emergency Department.

Every Wednesday, Thompson works with Children’s patients in the garden for an hour to teach them how to raise vegetables. They then head inside to the hospital’s Eat Well Be Well studio to prepare healthy, garden-inspired meals.

“The goal is to encourage and empower kids and families to eat healthy,” Thompson said.

Read full post »

The transition back to school is fast approaching and while kids may be wondering whether or not their Captain America lunchbox is still cool, parents are thinking about what should go in it.

Celia Framson, MPH, RD, CD, a clinical pediatric dietitian at Seattle Children’s Hospital, says parents shouldn’t panic about packing the perfect lunch for their child. Instead, they should involve kids in the packing process and focus on providing a balanced meal that meets a child’s taste preferences and nutritional needs. Parents should also model healthy behaviors that their kids can learn from so they can adopt healthy habits that will last a lifetime.
Read full post »

Receiving report cards from schools is a standard practice that helps parents stay informed about their child’s academic performance. But now, schools in some states have been going one step further and are also letting parents know how their child’s weight measures up.

A new report released this week in Pediatrics has spurred debate around this issue as it states that Body Mass Index (BMI) screenings in schools and subsequently informing parents about their child’s weight category is a necessary step in the fight against the childhood obesity epidemic.

Twenty one states, not currently including Washington, have enacted policies or made recommendations about collecting height and weight data and assessing body composition in schools. In some states, like Massachusetts and Arkansas, a confidential letter that has been dubbed a “fat letter” is mailed to parents whose child has a high BMI, informing them of their child’s weight status and advising them to talk with a doctor.

Read full post »