health guides

Fibre, fat, and nutrient density

To look at how diet affects the risk of metabolic syndrome in 12- to 19-year-old boys and girls, researchers collected nutrition surveys from 2,128 children and identified who had metabolic syndrome. Some interesting results on the connections between diet and the risk of metabolic syndrome in adolescents came out of this study:

70% of the teens had at least one risk factor for the condition and 6.4% (138 out of 2,128) of the teens had metabolic syndrome. The biggest factor seemed to point to fibre consumption, as teens who ate the most had the lowest risk of metabolic syndrome:

• Teens eating 11 grams of fibre for each 1,000 calories were three times less likely to have metabolic syndrome compared with those eating 3 grams of fibre for each 1,000 calories.
• For reference, if the average teen eats about 2,500 calories per day, teens getting 28 grams of fibre daily were three times less likely to have metabolic syndrome than teens eating 8 grams of fibre per day.
• For each additional 1 to 3 grams of fibre eaten per 1,000 calories consumed, the risk of a teen having metabolic syndrome decreased by 20%.

There was no connection between the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet and risk of metabolic syndrome in teens.

Fibre focus for healthier youth

This study suggests a strong connection between a healthy, fibre-rich diet and lower risk of metabolic syndrome in teens. With a few simple tweaks to your family’s nutrition habits, you can put everyone on the path to better long-term health:

• Adding healthy foods into the diet is much easier than telling children they can’t have their less-healthy favourites. Nobody likes to be told what they can’t eat, especially teens!
• To keep the focus on healthy additions, stock up on any fibre-rich foods you already know your children like, and introduce new options. Popular items include apples, bananas, high fibre cereal, nuts, dried fruit, cut up vegetables and dip (try salsa, yoghurt, or hummus), and whole grain biscuits with peanut butter.
• Model good behaviour. If your teen sees you munching on potato chips, your message of healthier eating is less likely to hit home, so don’t keep these foods in the house, or save them for a special treat, like family movie night. Seeing you pick an apple and handful of nuts for a snack will do far more to get your children on track nutritionally than all the talking in the world.

(J Am Diet Assoc 2011; 111:1730–4)