Eating Cereal Helps Kids Control Weight

If you want to keep your kid's weight down, serving breakfast cereal in the morning might not be a bad idea, researchers report.

"We are able to show a strong association between the frequent consumption of ready-to-eat cereals and body mass index (BMI) in children ages 4 to 12," says lead researcher Ann M. Albertson, a senior nutrition research scientist at Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition.

The Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition is a part of General Mills Inc., the nation's second largest cereal maker, which funded the study.

Albertson and her colleagues collected data on cereal consumption in 2,000 households that included 603 children aged 4 through 12. The children were categorized according to age and how much cereal they ate over a two-week period.

The researchers accounted for all types of cereal, including whole-grain and presweetened cereals.

Albertson's team found that children who ate eight or more servings of cereal over the two weeks had significantly lower BMIs compared with children who ate three servings or less.

Almost 80 percent of the children who ate cereal often had an appropriate body weight for their age and gender, according to the report in the Dec. 3 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

In addition, children who ate the most cereal also had more vitamins A and B6, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, calcium, iron and zinc compared with children who ate little or no cereal.

"Kids who eat cereal are less likely to be at risk for being overweight," Albertson says. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standards, among children aged 4 to 12 the risk for being overweight is about one in three.

But Albertson's team found that for children who ate cereal eight or more times during the two weeks of the study, the risk for being overweight was reduced to one in five. For those who ate little cereal, the risk increased to almost one in two.

"Cereals are unique in that they are a fortified grain product, and they are low in fat and almost always eaten with milk, which is a good source of calcium," Albertson says.

Despite the fact that some of the cereals were presweetened, there was no difference in the overall sugar consumption between the two groups of children, she notes. "Ready-to eat-cereal contributes only about 5 percent of total sugar intake in kid's diets," Albertson adds.

"If you can get your kids to eat a cereal breakfast, you are helping to guarantee a more sound nutrient intake as well as setting them up for eating patterns that are associated with more favorable body weight," Albertson says.

Dr. David L. Katz, an associate professor at the Yale School of Medicine and author of The Way to Eat, says the study "reaffirms what we have long known, but has recently been challenged by prevailing dietary fads and fashion: eating grains is good for us."

Katz adds that the benefits of cereal accrued even when the cereals were far from optimal, including brands with added sugar and fat.

"It is likely -- indeed, almost certain -- that efforts to promote widespread reliance on more wholesome, less processed cereals would confer even greater benefits with regard to weight control and health," he says.

"The focus of the current study on children is especially timely, as the adverse health effects of epidemic obesity on children are extremely ominous," Katz says.

"Encouraging children to make whole-grain cereals a consistent part of their diets is simple, convenient and of considerable potential benefit to their weight and health," he adds. "The bottom line is that diets abundant in whole grains, along with vegetables and fruit, are conducive to both health and weight control."

More information

To learn more about childhood nutrition, visit the American Dietetic Association, while the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion has more general information on eating right.

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