Data looking at childhood obesity is interesting, because children do not possess the same conscious realisation as adults that high food intake will make them overweight. In addition, they naturally expend large quantities of energy through play. That childhood obesity rates are increasing therefore suggests that lethargy and greed are not the cause of excessive weight gain, as it continually promulgated by the mainstream medical establishment and their paid agents. Instead, a rise in the cases of childhood obesity points to drastic changes in the type of food we consume, in so far as to say that the quality of the food is the primary driver of unhealthy weight gain. Diet quality is difficult to quantify, but a number of key components are hypothesised to be required to constitute a high quality diet. One of these is low glycaemic index vegetables and fruits containing their original fibre.
Reducing the glycaemic load through manipulation of the glycaemic index of food has been shown consistently to cause weight loss in overweight individuals. Although not all fruits have a low glycaemic index, most vegetables do. Incorporating more fruits and vegetables into the diet is therefore an effective way to reduce the glycaemic index, and therefore the glycaemic load of the diet as a whole. Researchers1 have investigated the effect of lowering the glycaemic load of of overweight and obese children (body mass index: 24.7; age:11y) through dietary manipulation by replacement of at least 50% of the high glycaemic index food by those with a low glycaemic index. Following 6 weeks of the intervention there was no change in body weight, but body fat percentages had fallen from 29.4 to 25.4 and the waist to hip ratio had fallen from 0.87 to 0.86. There was also a self-reported decrease in hunger levels.
These results suggest that replacing high glycaemic index foods with low glycaemic index fruit and vegetable alternatives is an effective strategy to reduce obesity in children. The fact that this treatment was effective suggests that poor diet quality, characterised by high glycaemic index foods, is a major cause of obesity. The children did not restrict calorific intake, but still lost weight and experienced a reduction in appetite, suggesting that the traditional greed and lethargy theory of weight gain is erroneous and should be reconsidered. The reduction in body fat and waist to hip ratio reduced the mean number of metabolic risk factors from 28 to 15, most notably serum triglycerides and high density lipoprotein cholesterol. The children also experiences an increase in muscle mass, suggesting that insulin resistance had been reduced, and this was confirmed with a reduction in the measurement of homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance (HOMA-IR).
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