Junky diet and tv for kids = overweight adults

Imagine yourself looking in a mirror at age 10 catching a glimpse of your 30 or 40 year old body. Would you be horrified or just slightly freaked out? Dr. Oz used this interesting tactic on yesterday's Oprah to drive home the importance of getting kids to eat healthfully from the get go. He showed a 10 year old boy his 400 pound body at 40 if he continued to eat junk and live a sedentary life for the next 30 years.
As a dietitian, I work with children and parents to help families start implementing healthier lifestyle habits. (Having a video depiction to show them the consequences of not making these changes would help tremendously in compliance, I imagine.) I've found the most important key to success is making changes the whole family follows. So, while you're working on getting your own 30 or 40 year old body (or at any age really) into the shape you would've been proud to see in that mirror at age 10, make sure the rest of the family follows suit. And while the choices available to kids -- check out this article in U.S. News and World Report on unhealthy foods available in schools -- is a critical component (read:buy lots of fruits and vegetables), educating your children, no matter how young, that eating nutritious foods make the body strong and healthy is just as important. Even my two year old knows that fruits are good for him, while donuts are only a once-in-a-while dessert.

Does a junky diet in pregnancy mean permanent damage for baby?

According to headlines in Forbes, Science Daily and several other publications on Monday and Tuesday, a new study from the UK came out that showed a diet full of junk food while pregnant can lead to irreversible, long-term health consequences to the child, such as obesity or high cholesterol and blood sugar into adolescence and even adulthood. So, if you're a pregnant woman who's been overindulging in chips and donuts lately, the guilt may be piling on. I'm here to tell you to relax and stop panicking -- headlines can be misleading. First of all, the study was done in rats, so the results may or may not hold true in humans. Secondly, you can absolutely start eating a better diet today --don't worry about what you've done up til now. Commit to eating at least 5 fruits and vegetables each day and making your bread/pasta selections whole grain. These filling foods leave little room for junk. Lastly, even the researchers comment that whether a mom ate poorly or not during pregnancy, a person needs to take responsibility to live a healthy lifestyle -- these health conditions are not inevitable and can be altered by making good diet and exercise choices throughout life.
So, as a dietitian I encourage you to eat a well-rounded, nutritious diet most of the time - allow yourself small treats here and there - and keep exercising (with your doctor's okay) during pregnancy, because it's good for you and for your baby. I didn't really need a study in rats to tell me that!

Pregnancy diet impacts baby's heart health, too

On the heels of the study showing that eating too much junk during pregnancy may make a difference in the baby becoming a junk-food junkie too, is a study looking at how diet during pregnancy impacts the baby's heart health into adulthood. The research is just getting underway, but the lead author suspects that it will show that not only does the mom's diet affect the baby's long term heart health, but the heart health of her grandchildren as well. Wow, that's a lot of responsibility! Bottom line: eat your fruits and veggies during pregnancy, future generations are counting on you.