Take-Out Fried Food Linked to Teen Weight Gain

Mom's cooking is best for the waistline. That's the message from researchers who blame fat-laden fast food for much of the abnormal weight gain in teenagers.

Adolescents who increased the amount of fried foods they ate outside of the home gained more weight than the amount to be expected for their age group, according to a study in the October issue of Pediatrics.

At the start of the study, those who never or rarely ate fried food away from home, but then a year later increased their intake to four to seven times a week, gained about 0.21 kg/m² (CI 0.03-0.39).

Children who for the most part bypassed fried foods both at baseline and after a year served as a reference; changes in body mass index were similar for both genders.

The direct association between fried food consumption and changes in body mass index were most pronounced for girls ages nine to 12, said lead author Elsie M. Taveras, M.D., M.P.H., an instructor in ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Medical School.

While it's no mystery that fried food is unhealthy, what is not as well-established is whether the current shift away from home-prepared meals toward ready-to-eat foods, many of them fried, is related to any change in body mass index in children, Dr. Taveras said.

Childhood obesity has tripled in the last 20 years, yet "the population has remained genetically stable," pointing to environmental factors, the authors noted.

The study of more than 14,000 children, ages nine to 14, found that while the weight gain from increased fried food consumption was small, the increase has the potential to snowball into clinically significant weight accumulation.

"Our findings suggest that consumption of fried foods away from home is associated with dietary patterns related to excessive weight gain, atherosclerotic Heart disease, cancer, and Type 2 diabetes," the researchers wrote. "These findings suggest that early educational efforts to reduce consumption of food prepared away from home may help prevent excessive weight gain and chronic disease risk in youths."

The study analyzed 7,745 girls and 6,610 boys who were the offspring of participants enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study II. The children reported their height and weight so that researchers could calculate their body mass index. Beginning in 1996 and yearly until 1999, the children filled out questionnaires asking about their consumption of 132 foods during the previous year.

Every year, the participants were asked, 'How often do you eat fried food away from home (i.e. French fries, chicken nuggets)?' The response categories were: never or less than once a week, one to three times a week, four to six times a week, and daily. Because responses to "daily" were sparse, this category was combined with the four-to-six times a week category in the analysis.