THE PROBLEMS OF WEIGHT LOSS: YOU MAY HAVE BEEN SET UP FOR OBESITY IN CHILDHOOD

Did yesterday's donut put the extra pound on your hips, or was it that donut you ate forty years ago? Or more accurately, was it those donuts and other sugary food artifacts you consumed throughout the first two decades of your development? How did eating habits in your formative years affect your tendency to gain weight now?

It is possible that poor dietary habits during those years when internal organs and body systems were being shaped have forever changed the way your body uses and stores energy. In other words, dietary indiscretions in childhood have damaged your homeostatic balance and possibly some key metabolic organs, and set you up for dietary challenge in adulthood.

Those of us who are now in our thirties, forties, and fifties grew up in the golden age of technology, especially food technology. No need to slave over a hot wood stove all day when you could pull dinner out of a box and set it steaming hot on the table within twenty minutes. Remember when TV dinners hit the market? How about instant mashed potatoes, Hamburger Helper, SpaghettiOs, and Rice-A-Roni? If you were like me, lunch was Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, a glass of reconstituted powdered milk, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (Wonder Bread and Jiffy's, of course).

"I try not to eat things in public. I have to hide everything I do because I feel someone is going to think something."

ALICE C.

Sugar consumption increased exponentially in the fifties. You weren't eating breakfast if you weren't reading the back of a cereal box. The Pepsi generation came of age long before Madison Avenue called it that, with the per-person consumption of soft drinks increasing from over ten gallons in 1950 and over sixteen gallons in 1960, to nearly forty-seven gallons per year in 1993.6

During this period of increasing consumption of highly processed, highly sugared, highly artificial foods was a declining value in "natural foods." For example, my own dietary history is grim but typical for my generation. I grew up on a tiny farm in a remote part of the country. My mother raised virtually all our vegetables on her plot of garden. She purchased crates of fresh fruits and canned hundreds of jars of jams, jellies, fruits, and vegetables, which we enjoyed each winter and spring. Mom liked to bake bread. Since homemade bread was cheaper than commercially produced bread, she purchased white flour in hundred-pound cloth bags and kneaded and baked several loaves each week, which we ate dripping with homemade butter and jam.

Sounds idyllic doesn't it? But a closer look at that diet may explain the health challenges I now experience in my late forties. The homemade jams and jellies contained more sugar than berries and were cooked until every vitamin or mineral molecule had evaporated into the hot kitchen air. Mom's hobby of canning fruits and vegetables for the county fair was profitable. Every year she scored blue ribbons for her efforts. The prizes? Several hundred pounds of sugar and cases of Karo syrup. Our family of seven polished off every speck of sugar and every drop of Karo syrup before the next autumn fair rolled around. And that didn't count the sugared cereals, the carbonated drinks, the candy bars.

The result? A permanently disabled or exhausted pancreas, the very critical organ that regulates blood sugar by regulating the flow of insulin and glucagon and the secretion of digestive enzymes. This important system that pulls excess sugars out of the bloodstream simply wears out from overuse.

Mom isn't the only guilty party here. I have to take my share of the blame. After all, I liked the sugar and junk food! I ate it very willingly. And after I left home and started making my own dietary choices, I chose junk food. I ate out of cans, boxes, and packages. I patronized every fast-food establishment in a ten-mile radius and selected the worst that the good restaurants had to offer. Only when my health started failing in my twenties did I finally look at my diet.

No, actually, it was my brother who piqued my curiosity. One hot summer afternoon, I made a pitcher of iced tea and laced it with several scoops of sugar. My brother watched me stir in the sugar and quietly said, "Don't you know that sugar is a poison?" This simple question initiated my quest for better health through improved nutrition.

Some twenty years later, my health is better than it ever has been, but I still bear the scars of thirty years of abuse. And I probably always will. I am convinced that excessive sugar and rancid fat consumption during formative years taxes the ability of the pancreas to regulate blood sugars normally and sets us up for insulin resistance and carbohydrate sensitivity later in life. Both these conditions are directly linked to increased tendency toward weight challenges.

Our rat friends from the research labs have provided us with valuable information about the effect of childhood eating patterns on adult health problems. One group of rats was fed the ideal diet, according to most American children. During the first few weeks of life, they were fed a high-sugar diet, both by slurping it out of their feed bowl and having it injected into their veins. For a period of time, the high-sugar food didn't have an impact on serum insulin levels, but after eight weeks of the steady onslaught of sugar, the rats' defense mechanisms began to wear out and insulin poured into their blood in a desperate attempt to keep blood sugar under control. The authors concluded "that long-term consumption of a diet in which available carbohydrate is rapidly absorbed causes insulin resistance in rats. The more rapidly that glucose is absorbed from the diet, the faster the insulin resistance develops."

Keep in mind that insulin resistance developed primarily as a result of the fast absorption of the simple sugars. Complex carbohydrates found in fresh fruits and vegetables don't have the same quick, deleterious effect on insulin levels.

Another group of rats, however, were fed a diet that may more closely imitate that of our kids—high-sugar and high-fat foods. The deadly combination of the sugar and fat was devastating to their homeostatic mechanisms, both in raising insulin levels and reducing the ability of the body to transport the sugars through the bloodstream and deposit and use it appropriately.

I got stuck with this challenge. Within three days of my birth, my mother became ill and was readmitted to the hospital with a life-threatening kidney infection. Instead of taking me to the hospital with her and allowing me to nurse even during her illness, my mother handed me over to my grandmother, who dutifully mixed condensed milk diluted with corn syrup, a few drops of liquid iron, and diluted it with water and fed me the formula out of the bottle. She was happy to do it, I'm sure. But that artificial formula wasn't good for my little body. My younger brothers were fed this same formula, which was popular during at least one generation of young children. What damage that formula has inflicted on a whole generation of children who now struggle with pancreas-related disorders such as diabetes, weight challenges, and allergies!

During the first two years of our lives, most of us ate far more than our share of processed sugars and fats and far less than our share of essential nutrients. Most of us poured cow's milk on our numerous bowls of sugary cereal and washed down Oreos or home-baked peanut butter cookies with a glass or two of the white stuff when we came home from school. These common childhood indulgences may have set us up for insulin resistance that renders our bodies incapable of either utilizing insulin properly or even balancing insulin secretion against glucagon secretion. Diets that are high in processed sugars have been clearly shown to produce insulin resistance. Cow's milk and harmful fats have shown the same result. When we adhere to this type of diet during the formative years of life, when our organs and tissues are developing, what happens to our ability to balance blood sugars later in life? Research literature is virtually silent on the subject.

My personal belief is that for many of us, blood sugar homeostatic mechanisms have been permanently, irreparably harmed because of childhood dietary indiscretions. If we are going to get both our blood sugar levels and our weight under control, we'll have to double up on our efforts to balance our diets appropriately, to choose a diet that balances proteins, carbohydrates, and fats in such a way that the excess secretion of insulin is not stimulated and that glucagon secretion and activation are encouraged. For many of us who really messed up our bodies during childhood, this is going to take enormous effort.

It isn't that we can't be thin now that the health and vitality of our pancreas and other organs are diminished. We've been handed a bigger challenge, and we just have to work harder at it.

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