Children’s health is important, now more than ever. Decisions you make as parent now can affect your child’s life—for better or for worse—down the road. But don’t worry, we’re here to help!
As September is National Children’s Obesity Month, our Co-Founders, Dave Sandoval & Amy Venner, dug deep into this topic in their Weekly Lifestyle Zoom.
Read this recap or scroll down to the bottom for the replay link.
Children’s Obesity
Statistics You Need to Know
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that nearly 20% of adolescents from age 2 to 19 are affected by obesity. In total, that is around 13.7 million individuals.
Breaking the age groups down also reveals a startling pattern: obesity prevalence increases as the ages increase. Just take a look at the CDC data:
- 13.9% of children 2 to 5 years of age
- 18.4% of children 6 to 11 years of age
- 20.6% of adolescents/young adults 12 to 19 years of age
With the numbers so high, we need to work together to help children eat healthier.
Factors to Consider
When discussing obesity and weight gain, there are a few factors we need to address:
- Food deserts
- Diet
- Sleep
- Stress
Food Deserts and Community Statistics
While anyone has the ability to suffer from obesity, some communities actually experience higher rates. For example, the CDC reports that obesity affects 25.8% of Hispanic children aged to 2 to 19 and 22% in the non-Hispanic black community as compared to 14.1% of the non-Hispanic white community.
What may be the culprit to these differences? Food deserts.
What exactly is a food desert? A food desert is an area where there is limited or no access to healthy foods. This most often occurs in low income areas.
Where there is low income, there is low access to higher quality food. Because of that, you may also find a higher rate of obesity and diabetes in low income neighborhoods as compared to the national average.
Diet
Diet is one of the more obvious factors of obesity. So, we won’t go to much into the matter.
But, we will mention that quality is just as important as portion size.
Your child can be eating appropriately portioned food, but if it is low-quality or highly-processed, it may still contribute to health concerns over time, such as weight gain.
Sleep
What most people don’t know is that our children need far more sleep than we ever realized. This is one of the most most important factors of weight gain right after diet.
So, how long should children be sleeping?
If you ask around the general consensus might be 8 hours, but the truth is that children need as many as 9 to 12 hours of sleep per day. It doesn’t all have to be sleep at night—naps and rest times are just as essential.
But sleeping isn’t enough—we need to ensure our children get deep sleep. During deep sleep, the body regulates its fat burning ability. What’s more, our bodies process information regulate several other processes as well, including releasing hormones related to body growth.
So if your child does get enough deep sleep, that can affect their size and weight. Ideally, children should get at least 2 or hours of deep sleep per session.
If you child is not getting enough sleep, this can lead to another factor: stress.
Stress
Stress can contribute to hormone imbalances. And we all know the last thing you want to do for kids already going through some serious hormonal changes is to make things even worse!
When your body is stressed, it releases hormones that trigger our body to store fat around critical organs, such as the liver, stomach and heart.
What’s more, stress can be the factor that contributes to weight gain even when your child is eating healthy and exercising.
Now that we have some background on the factors of weight gain and obesity, let’s talk about ways to encourage healthy weight and healthy eating.
Nutritional Support
What kinds of superfoods do Amy and Dave recommend to support better help? Here are their top picks.
Epi-Genius Kids
Epi-Genius Kids is a creamy chocolate shake mix, with 20 organic superfoods. It has super fruits, vegan protein, super greens and vitamins A, C, D, and E
What’s more, it contains:
- 1300 and 60 milligrams of fruit
- 350 milligrams of veggies
- 1 capsule dosage of Biome Medic in a serving
- Proprietary organic vegan protein blend of pea protein and hemp protein
- Antioxidant fruit and berry blend (full of seasonal fruits that you can’t really get in store unless it’s in season!)
- MCT Oil (Just in case you don’t know, MCT Oil is medium chain triglyceride oil that may support your body in burning fat. The oil comes from coconuts).
Dave Sandoval formulated Epi-Genius Kids as a functional drink to help children (even adults!) create a healthy craving for nourishing foods. For more detailed information about this blend, check out our blog, Your Guide to Epi-Genius Kids.
Now, we move on to another favorite for children.
In Focus
In Focus is an organic, alcohol-free herbal tincture helps support focus balanced energy for our kiddos.
Some ingredients include:
- Eleuthero root
- lemon balm herb
- chamomile flower
- passion flower herb
These ingredients help support a calm and relaxed state, especially when there are a lot of distractions. For this formula, Dave consulted with master herbalists who have a combined total of over 120 years experience between the three of them.
So why would we recommend this in a blog about children’s obesity? Well, stress can affect eating habits. So it’s important to address stress and have an answer ready for when it sprouts up, so you can help your kids avoid stress-eating. For more information about this product, read our In Focus blog.
If your child needs some more help with stress and mood, we have another recommendation.
Apothe-Cherry
Apothe-Cherry is antioxidant-rich, and supports deeper sleep by helping your body produce melatonin. Remember, deep sleep is vital not only for healthy weight, but overall, a healthy body too!
This concentrate is super versatile – it can be mixed with vegan ice cream, sorbet and even apple sauce.
Now that you have sleep covered, our recommendation is Control capsules for cravings.
Control
Our Control Capsules were created to help support cravings control.They’re designed to help you eat less and reduce the impact of simple carbs and sugars.
That process helps lessen the possibility that your body will convert them into fat.
Some of the star ingredients include:
- Nopal Cactus
- Garcinia Cambogia Extract
- Green Tea Extract
- American Ginseng (Panax quinquefolius)
- White Kidney Bean Extract
Zoom Replay
We hope we were shed some light on childhood obesity and equip you with tools for better health.
To learn more nutritional knowledge and tidbits that we did not include in our recap, be sure to watch Dave and Amy’s Zoom replay.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, mitigate, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
