A team of scientists in Canada has suggested that raising children on diet foods and drinks could inadvertently turn them into obese adults. They said that children’s bodies learn to connect the taste of different foods and drinks with whether they are high or low in calories, and if they only have diet food and drink this connection becomes distorted leading them to overeat as they develop into adults.
The study will be published in the journal Obesity and is the work of sociologist Dr David Pierce and colleagues from the University of Alberta.
“Based on what we’ve learned, it is better for children to eat healthy, well-balanced diets with sufficient calories for their daily activities rather than low-calorie snacks or meals,” said Pierce.
He and his team showed that feeding young rats low calorie substitutes of food and drink led them to overeat, whether they were lean or genetically obese. Eating too many calories is more of a health risk for obese animals.
However, older, adolescent rats that were also fed low calorie substitutes of their regular food and drink did not overeat. The researchers concluded that the older rats did not overeat because by this age they had learned to assess the calorific value of different foods and drinks using their sense of taste, and this regulated their intake. They called this process “taste conditioning”.
Pierce said that:
“The use of diet food and drinks from an early age into adulthood may induce overeating and gradual weight gain through the taste conditioning process that we have described.”
The authors suggest taste conditioning could explain what has been puzzling scientists who have conducted studies in this area. For instance one particular study at the University of Massachusetts found drinking diet soda in childhood was linked to higher risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
The scientists said more research was needed especially in older animals and using a range of taste-related cues.
However, Pierce wished to make clear that this research has shown that:
“Young animals can be made to overeat when low-calorie foods and drinks are given to them on a daily basis, and this subverts their bodies’ energy-balance system.”
“Parents and health professionals should be made aware of this and know that the old-fashioned ways to keep children fit and healthy, ensuring they eat well balanced meals and exercise regularly, are the best ways. Diet foods are probably not a good idea for growing youngsters,” he added.
A pediatric endocrinologist and childhood obesity expert, Dr Katherine Morrison, said in an interview for CBS News Consumer Life that she found the study “intriguing”. She said she welcomed it because it helps scientists to understand more about how “we become full and what is it that encourages us to eat”.
Morrison told CBS News she encourages parents to give children healthy foods such as vegetables, fruit or salad when they come home from school “famished” because they “take the edge off” while they wait for the evening meal. She does not advocate feeding them with high calorie foods like chips or chocolate bars or even granola bars, because they “give a pretty high-calorie punch in short order”.
Click here for the journal Obesity.
Click here for CBS News Consumer Life report on this study.
Written by: Catharine Paddock