FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Obese children appear to be especially susceptible to the lure of fast food, a study found. They stuff themselves even more ravenously than other youngsters do and are less able to compensate by eating sparingly the rest of the day.
The small study is nutrition experts’ latest attempt to nail down the link they suspect exists between fast food and the daunting increase in obesity, which now afflicts one in 10 children and teenagers in the United States.
Dr. David Ludwig’s team at Boston’s Children’s Hospital set up an experiment at a food court. The volunteer eaters were 26 obese children and 28 who were of normal size.
Everyone started out with the equivalent of a supersize value meal of chicken nuggets, fries, cola and cookies that added up to 2,100 calories. And eat they did. Large or lean, the children wolfed down plenty of food.
But in the end, the big kids ate more. The obese youngsters downed 67 percent of their daily calories in one sitting, while the normal-size ones got 57 percent.
Next, the researchers made an unannounced call to see how much the same youngsters eat over a whole day when on their own. On a day they had fast food, the obese youngsters ate a total of 400 more calories than on a day when they ate at home. However, the lean kids ate the same amount of total calories whether they had a fast food meal or not.
They concluded that overweight children are more susceptible to gargantuan fast food meals because they do not have — or have somehow lost — the ability to even out their intake by cutting back over the rest of the day.
The research was presented at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, which concluded Wednesday.
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