For several years, many have been quick to attribute rising fast-food consumption as the major factor causing rapid increases in childhood obesity. However a new study found that fast-food consumption is simply a byproduct of a much bigger problem: poor all-day-long dietary habits that originate in children’s homes. The study, titled “The association of fast food consumption with poor dietary outcomes and obesity among children: is it the fast food or the remainder of diet?,” was produced by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and published in the latest issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
 
The study’s researchers found that children’s consumption of fast food is only a small part of a much more pervasive dietary pattern that is fostered at an early age by children’s parents and caregivers. The pattern includes few fruits and vegetables, relying instead on high amounts of processed food and sugar-sweetened beverages. These food choices are also reinforced in the meals students are offered at school. “This is really what is driving children’s obesity,” said Dr. Barry Popkin, W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, whose team led the study. “Eating fast foods is just one behavior that results from those bad habits. Just because children who eat more fast food are the most likely to become obese does not prove that calories from fast foods bear the brunt of the blame.”

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An estimated eight million lives have been saved in the United States as a result of the anti-smoking measures that began 50 years ago this month with the release of the ground-breaking Surgeon General of the United States’ report outlining the deadly consequences of tobacco use. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Yale School of Public Health-led analysis used mathematical models to calculate the effect of the seminal report and subsequent anti-smoking measures over the past half century. These cumulative efforts have significantly reshaped public attitudes and behaviors concerning cigarettes and other forms of tobacco.
 
Dr. Theodore R. Holford, professor in the department of biostatistics, and six other researchers that are part of the NCI’s Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) found that while some 17.6 million Americans have died since 1964 due to smoking-related causes, eight million lives have been saved as a result of increasingly stringent tobacco-control measures that commenced with the report’s January 11, 1964, release. Of the lives saved, approximately 5.3 million were men and 2.7 million women. The total number of saved lives translates into an estimated 157 million years of life, a mean of 19.6 years for each beneficiary.

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