Two-thirds of children between the ages of two to five years old eat fast-food at least once a week in California, according to a study released Monday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
The study gathered data from the 2007 and 2009 California Health Interview Survey and found that 60 percent of children are eating fast food at least once a week, and one in 10 is eating three fast food meals a week.
“That’s too high for me,” says Susan Holtby, the lead author of the study and a senior researcher at the Public Health Institute in Oakland. “To have that many children that young eating fast food every week calls for attention. Those are the years where you really set the pace and set the tone for what a child’s diet will be like going forward to teens years.”
One in three children and adolescents in the U.S. are either overweight or obese -- which increases their risk of eventually developing Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and a host of other health problems. Holtby says previous research has shown the link between fast food consumption and obesity, so cutting down the amount of fast foods young kids eat may help curb the country’s obesity epidemic.
“We know that children who are overweight when they’re very young can continue to be overweight,” Holtby said. “That can be more difficult to reverse once you get to the pre-teen puberty years. To a set a course like that in a child’s life is really doing a disservice to health effects later on.”