Saturday, September 24th, 2016
Stephan: Child obesity in the U.S. has increased from 7% of 6-11 year olds being obese in 1980, to nearly 18% in 2012. At the same time the number of children experiencing food insecurity and hunger has similarly increased. In 2014 15.3 million children -- 14% fell into this category. Both conditions arise from the same trend: we are a society which routinely places profit above wellbeing.
And there are long term physiological differences in our bodies arising from the trend that are personally and socially costly in a many ways. Some are obvious like Type II diabetes, others less so. Here is the emerging story of one of the later.
Obese children and teens have different types of bacteria living in their digestive tract than their normal-weight peers, a new study reports.
The researchers said this finding might eventually lead to a way to target specific species of bacteria and help prevent or treat early onset obesity.
For the study, the researchers analyzed the gut bacteria and weight of 84 young people between the ages of 7 and 20. Of these kids, 27 were obese, 35 were severely obese, seven were overweight and 15 were normal weight.
The children and teens underwent an MRI to assess their body fat distribution. They also gave blood samples and kept track of what they ate in a food diary for three days.
The study authors found eight groups of gut bacteria that were linked to the amount of fat in the body. Four of them thrived more in the young people who were obese, the study showed.
Smaller amounts of the other four bacteria groups were found in the young people who […]
