Fat parents raise underweight children on junk food

Fat parents raise underweight children on junk food

Margie Mason, Associated Press, Jakarta

When a woman with a fat aluminum kettle on her back enters a
working-class neighborhood, children quickly swarm around to
share spoonfuls of the thick, syrupy porridge scooped from the
vat.

This treat called bubur sumsum Jawa -- rice flour mixed with
sweet coconut milk and sugar -- sells for about Rp 1,000 (10 U.S.
cents) a bowl, creating a local favorite cheap enough for many
poor families in Indonesia's sprawling capital.

Indonesia has its share of McDonald's and KFCs, but far more
ubiquitous and affordable are cheap street foods like the sweet
porridge and chiki-chiki, the country's catchphrase for packaged
junk food. As families abandon the countryside for cities, the
abundance of this poor-quality food has grown.

One result, say global health experts, is the paradox of
underweight children with fat parents.

Dr. Benjamin Caballero first noticed overweight mothers with
thin, stunted children a few years ago in a Brazilian clinic.

After looking closer, he found the problem was more widespread
and prevalent in developing Asian nations undergoing economic
transition with a high number of people migrating to cities.

A survey published in the International Journal of Obesity
within the past year examined seven countries for underweight-
overweight households.

The two with the highest prevalence of such families are in
Asia: Kyrgyzstan with 13 percent and Indonesia with 11 percent, a
finding based on data from several years ago and adjusted for
household size.

These countries are still relatively poor, but incomes are
growing enough for parents to give children the equivalent of a
few U.S. cents a day for preservative-filled, processed foods
lacking vital nutrients children need to grow properly. Adults
who eat them merely get fat.

Caballero, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Johns
Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote of
the phenomenon in a recent commentary in the New England Journal
of Medicine.

"A lot of the globalization of food markets has resulted in
the introduction of many processed foods in these countries in
transition, which has changed the eating habits of people," he
said in an interview.

Families who once grew their own fruits and vegetables now
must buy everything in the city where cheap street food abounds.
That change, along with more mothers working outside the home and
cooking less and families watching TV instead of working in
fields, is what's leading to these so-called "dual-burden"
households, Caballero wrote in the medical journal.

Changes in eating habits are visible on Jakarta's busy streets
and in its outlying neighborhoods as children like seven-year-old
Raras, come home from school and beg their parents for change to
buy chiki-chiki -- potato chips, candy, fried cassava, cookies.

"My kids prefer to eat that type of food every day," said
Raras' mother, Nining. "I tried to forbid my kids from buying
that kind of food, but I cannot."

Nining, who is chubby by Indonesian standards, said her
average-sized daughter began eating chiki-chiki when she was
two years old and is now addicted to it.

An Indonesian nutritionist says the majority of families she
sees are still underweight, although she's starting to see more
fat children with fat parents in wealthier families.

"In lower-income families, usually the mother or father are
quite skinny and the children become undernourished or stunted --
not growing tall or not enough weight," said Uken Soetrisno, of
the government Board of Research and Development of Nutrition and
Food.

And while the majority of households may not have overweight
and underweight members, Caballero said he's received letters
from health experts all over the world who are seeing the
phenomenon more and more.

He fears that the problem will progress to a new phase as
these countries gain more wealth -- producing overweight
families, as is the trend in many Latin American countries.

To address the dual-burden issue, Caballero recommends that
governments recognize the phenomenon and devise intervention
plans targeting both underweight and overweight households.

Key prevention for both could include encouraging breast-
feeding, improving nutrition among women of child-bearing age and
educating communities about the importance of prenatal nutrition.