Snacktime: A simple solution to the obesity epidemic?

After listening to Debbie Kibbe's lecture in class today on childhood obesity, I started thinking more about my own experiences as a child with food. My family ate dinner together almost every evening, my mom hardly allowed me to eat a school lunch, and I still have a fond memory for the orange slices served at soccer practice. Reminiscing about snacks made me think about snack time in class, I remember we used to have animal crackers and apple juice served in dixie cups after recess. The food in our schools is atrocious, and it is especially easy to point to when discussing childhood obesity.

I started to think more about the topic, especially since we have been discussing school lunches in Professor Hobb's Nutrition Across the Life Cycle Course. Schools have tried to improve the quality of nutrition through many federal programs, but none are perfect. Learning about childhood obesity and thinking about how snacking is closely engrained in the American culture through school (snack time in class, eating snacks between class, having an after school snack) I wanted to see how this tied into my personal project.

I did some research and found out that I was not the only one interested in learning about the link between childhood obesity and snacking (or meal frequency). Researchers in Germany were interested in finding out more about the relationship between children eating snacks at school and obesity. I believe that this is some of the most significant research I have come across so far in this project, because obesity is a chronic disease that can be carried onto the next generation.

The researchers were prompted to conduct their study because of the other existing literature that establishes an inverse association between meal frequency and obesity, and they wanted to see if the same relationship existed among children. I was slightly surprised when the researchers concluded that there was a dose response relationship between childhood obesity and the number of meals consumed through out the day. The main difference between this study and all the others is the sample size, the Toschke article had a sample size of 2,300 students.

At first when reading this article, I was well aware that the sample came from Germany. So any obesity in the study could not be blamed on the American School lunches and snacks. However, I was interested to find out that in a study referenced in the article, the researchers came to the same conclusion that increased meal frequency had a protective effect on obesity. The only downside to the American study was that their results were not deemed statistically significant due to sample size.

Toschke and his coauthors cite reasons such as increase in thermogenesis after consumption, lower insulin levels among nibblers, and possibly physical activity behind the association between high food frequency and lower obesity levels. They also link the meal frequency back to the common issue of skipping breakfast, since many children often skip the first meal of the day. I thought that this was an interesting connection that the author made.

As one of my last blog posts in this series, I wanted to share this research with you. I think it is horrible how the pop culture media portrays this myth without looking at the other health benefits of nibbling. I am not claiming that increasing the number of snacks in schools is going to cure obesity, but I think it could be worth investing in learning more about the association in America.



References:

Toschke, A. M., Küchenhoff, H., Koletzko, B. and Von Kries, R. (2005), Meal Frequency and Childhood Obesity. Obesity Research, 13: 1932–1938. doi: 10.1038/oby.2005.238 

"Hawaii Child Nutrition Programs." Hawaii Child Nutrition Programs. Hawaii Department of Education, n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.