nosh nook #18 - wednesday, april 8, 2009

kids who lack self-control more prone to obesity later (link)
04.07.09 - time magazine - by alice park

it's no secret that we americans aren't exactly known for our self-control.  we love hummer H2s & cocaine addictions & MST3K marathons & ten-digit spending projects.  we love overdoing it, and as a result of our lack of self-control, we now have a hole in the ozone layer & a super-high national debt & a rate of obesity somewhere around 30%.  it turns out that these gluttonous habits develop at an early age.

as time magazine's alice park reports, this week's archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine contains two papers that show a corollation between self-restraint & obesity.  the first study, done at penn st, followed 1000 kids.  in it, they performed tests where a three-year old was left alone in a room with a totally awesome toy but told not to touch it.  if that kid made it 75 seconds without touching it, they were labeled as having high-self-control.  they performed a similar test on the kids at age five.  they left each one alone in a room with a large pile & a small pile of snacks & told them that they could eat from the small pile at any time, but if they waited until the experimenter returned, they could eat from the big pile.  if a kid could wait long enough & not eat from the small pile, they were again labeled as having high self-control.  by age 12, the ones who scored low on both tests were 30% heavier.  the 2nd study, done at the university of michigan, proved the same corollation with a similar, food-inclusive study--47% of kids scored low & these kids were 30% more likely to be overweight down the road.

based on what's reported in the time magazine article, i've determined that there's another, untapped angle to this study.  kids who have self-restraint mentally or physically beaten into them often snap once they reach adulthood.  these are the amish who don't join the fold post-rumspringa.  they're the people you knew in college who are away from home for the first time & therefore, must get wasted at every opportunity.  they're the people ultimately unconcerned with consequences...in the end, the restraint is often self-imposed & unnatural & it might just be human nature to want pleasurable things & want them right now.  too bad that when that comes to snacks, obesity's the tradeoff.