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The “super size me” effect got a little one. He chooses fries from vegetables and blueberries from fruit. At the sound of the whistle, he becomes out of breath and ends PE lessons on the indispensable bench. At this rate, the “happy meal generation” will not survive until retirement. Polish children gain weight the fastest in Europe. We are talking about small giants with prof. Małgorzata Kozłowska-Wojciechowska.
Zuzanna Opolska, Medonet: Does maternal nutrition during pregnancy affect the baby’s weight?
Prof. Małgorzata Kozłowska-Wojciechowska: May have. The Polish mentality still believes that pregnancy is a time to eat for two. But then you have to eat for two first of all. This is a significant difference. Most women who are expecting a baby do not receive adequate information. Recently, I was at a conference in Rome devoted to one element: magnesium. It turns out that it is of fundamental importance for pregnant women. What products should we choose? Cocoa, sunflower seeds, almonds, buckwheat. And instead … we take the pills
Because it’s faster.
No, because we were told so. Nobody comes into the world with the idea that we shop at a pharmacy. The supplement market confused everyone in their heads. We live in a world where we don’t turn to a doctor for first aid, but to Dr. Google. We forgot that nutrition determines mental and physical fitness. Our old age is written in the childhood we so disregard.
The effects are deplorable – Polish children gain weight the fastest in Europe. Why?
I have a lot of grudge against the people who were responsible for the school programs. School is the best place for shaping life attitudes and healthy habits. Ten hours of educational activities a year are enough for a radical change. I conducted three-year research during which children learned the basics of rational nutrition. They brought educational materials and health recommendations home and studied with their parents. Both have changed their approach to diet for years. Attitudes can always be changed, flavors can never be changed. Children gain weight because they cannot make the right choices. Instead of an apple – a bar, instead of sandwiches for lunch – a casserole. Patterns are missing.
Parents don’t work out?
Unfortunately, we are to a large extent responsible for the overweight of children. We don’t care about the diet. If both parents are obese, the probability that the child will be obese is 75 percent. If only the mother is obese, the probability is halved, if only the father is already 25%. In our culture, it is women who shop and decide what will be in the fridge and on the table.
Another problem is the lack of physical activity.
We sat the children on chairs. The yards of the estates are quiet, and the playing fields are empty ball games. I often hear parents calling their children to order: “behave, be quiet.” In primary schools, it is similar – they sit in class and are not to move. Who is responsible for it? And children have movement inherent in their physiology – they crawl, walk, run. The “it’s for his safety” argument is irrational. For your safety, your child is under your guardianship. The easiest way is to give him a smartphone to play with and close the room.
When should a child’s weight start to worry us?
I believe that we should monitor it at all ages. If a child begins to gain weight inconsistently with the age range, we cannot wait. Just think about the cause. Today, nobody talks about food hygiene. And just as in everyday life there are times of getting up and going to bed, we should sit at the table at certain times. Back in the day, nobody ate lunches or brunches. We were used to five meals: breakfast, lunch, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. The school breakfast break lasted an hour, and the children and teachers were required to eat lunch. When in 1982 in Warsaw I was conducting research on obesity in children up to 10 years of age, I could not find it. There were less than 2,3 percent of them. all over Poland, a trace amount.
Why is regular eating so important?
A child, accustomed to five meals, has a loss of energy related to eating in the energy balance. If we switch to a 1000 kcal diet, spread over four meals, we will lose about five to six kilograms in a month. But if we take these 1000 kcal during one meal, we will lose much less, or not at all. And today we apply the principle of “à la demande” – on demand. The child is hungry to eat it.
And it stops when it’s full. The intuitive approach to diet fails?
Yes, when we are hungry, we eat uncontrolled amounts. Everyone’s stomach is different. If we eat moderate-sized meals, it’s in the right proportions. However, if we reach for larger portions, washed down with plenty of fluids, we stretch it. Therefore, listening to your body’s signals won’t help. Nutritionists have long alarmed: “let’s eat more, but less.”
Research conducted by TSN Polska shows that within 24 hours. half of the parents did not give their children water …
Unfortunately, NaCl is still the most expensive drug in Poland. Vein saline, rehydration and electrolyte replenishment. We are a dehydrated nation. If a child sees dad with a can of beer, and mom with a can of Coke Zero, then talking about forming habits does not make sense. And water is the basis of life. The body of an adult man consists of 60% of it, and the body of a child – 75%. It is assumed that the minimum amount of water that prevents pathological changes in the body is 1 liter per day. By drinking sweet energy drinks or coffee, we not only rinse out valuable elements, such as potassium or magnesium, but also dehydrate it. Let us not forget that water is essential for the proper course of the digestive process, conditioning the movement of food contents and the proper functioning of digestive enzymes.
How to start losing weight? A total ban on sweets, an empty fridge or a slimming holiday?
The child should be referred by a doctor for holidays or slimming camps. Let us not make them adults and we should not force them to the restrictive diets we use. The baby has its own essential nutrient needs. And while mom or dad can approach nutrition in a more relaxed way, deficiencies in children are immediately noticeable by the body. I am definitely against bans because they don’t work in the long run. When Polish children stopped salting their school meals, they began to deal with salt. Let’s not blame the bun, but the system. In Sweden, there has been a “sweet day” for a long time – that is, one day a week when you can eat sweets in any quantity. Interestingly, with time the children were less and less interested in them and ceased to be an attraction. The safety of any diet is a variety of flavors and nutrients. Therefore, let’s not cut calories drastically, it is enough to reduce the daily number of calories by 200 from time to time. If one chocolate candy has 100 kcal, it is not a big sacrifice. The worst option is a gluten-free, dairy-free or vegetable diet that parents follow without health justification.
In the news, we often hear about vegans starving their own child …
I always say: “to be a vegetarian you have to be more knowledgeable about nutrition than I do.” If you know everything about rational nutrition, nutritional values and the body’s needs, then you can give up meat. I do not support veganism, genius loci matters and we must take it into account in the model of life. We have always lived in this geographical part, with this soil and with this climate. And our metabolism is different from that of an Indian. This has been shown by German research involving the non-meat-eating Brahmin caste. The Indian emigrants had phenomenal morphology and high levels of vitamin B12 when they came to Germany. But after a year, their results changed drastically. It turned out that they had the ability to nest bacteria in the body that produced cobalamin. In Germany, they ate the same diet, but the water and the environment were completely different, and the bacteria became extinct. For a very long time I could not come to terms with the anti-advertising of milk in Poland.
“Drink milk, you’ll be crippled.”
Yes, milk – white death. It started with the appearance on the Polish publishing market of Dr. Sharma Nand Kishare’s book “Mleko quiet murderer”. Nobody has checked who the author is. A brahmana for whom the cow is holy, who wrote a book for his own. The American pyramid of the late 80s eliminated milk in favor of supplements of calcium and vitamin D. Today it has been brought back again. Dairy not only provides us with easily digestible protein and calcium, but also helps burn fat, especially brown. If the patient asks me what not to eat, I answer – what you don’t like. You do not like milk, reach for kefir, yoghurt or cottage cheese, there are many possibilities.
Poles reach for plant milks and soy products.
Processed foods are harder on the body. Therefore, the simpler we eat, the better. Let’s not just reach for exotic fruits, let’s choose apples or strawberries. In Poland, there is a belief that celebrities who cook on breakfast TV sets and fitness bloggers eat properly. And that’s nothing more misleading. To eat healthy, you don’t have to spend enormous amounts of money in eco-shops, but just think what you are going to choose.
What diseases are overweight children at risk of?
For all diseases that result from obesity: hypertension, atherosclerosis, ischemic heart disease, diabetes. But also diseases of the digestive system, functional disorders: reflux disease, disorders in the bowel cycle, functional disorders of the intestines and degreasing. An obese child is a baggage of diseases that will show up very quickly. I remember research from the turn of the 70s and 80s – hypertension in adolescents was at the level of 0,09 percent, now it is more than a dozen percent. It is influenced not only by obesity, but also by the design of meals, high salt consumption and fast food.
What do you think about introducing the profession of obesityologist dealing with obesity treatment?
The more specializations, the worse we are treated. It remains a problem not to include the profession of dietitian on the list of medical professions. In the United States, every doctor knows that cooperation with a good nutritionist, pharmacologist and physiotherapist is half the battle. A patient who comes to the hospital is immediately referred to a dietitian’s office. It is checked whether the current diet could have had an impact on the course of the disease and how to nourish the patient in the hospital. Only comprehensive treatment has a future.
Prof. Małgorzata Kozłowska-Wojciechowska is a long-term researcher at the Food and Nutrition Institute in Warsaw, an independent researcher at the Medical University of Warsaw. He deals with health education. She is the author of the book “Live in Health, or the Food Pyramid”.