Overall dietary habits have more to do with childhood obesity than did a diet of fast food.
January 24/Chapel Hill, N.C./University of North Carolina -- According to research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, overall dietary habits have more to do with childhood obesity than did a diet of fast food; it just so happened that children with poor Western diets also ate more fast food than children with healthier meal plans.
“While reducing fast food is important to improve dietary quality, we [also] need to focus on the rest of the diet,” said study researcher Jennifer Poti, a doctoral candidate in nutritional epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “Fast food is still a very important factor and associated with poor diet quality and overweight and obesity,” Poti said. “When we think about trying to improve our child’s diet, we need to think about all the places our kids eat and encourage better choices.”