Train Your Kids For A Low-Fat Diet Early In Life

Do parents need to begin training their kids to follow a low-fat lifestyle as soon as they are weaned?

“Absolutely,” says Dr. Charles Attwood, a Louisiana pediatrician. Left to the typical American diet, half the children born today will develop some form of heart disease and a third will get cancer, he predicts.

“Yet parents today are in a position to radically change the health of an entire generation and eliminate chronic diseases in their children,” Attwood says.

It’s as simple as starting kids off eating lots of fruits, grains, vegetables and legumes - and very little fat. That’s something the young can do much more readily than their elders, he says.

So, of course, he’s written a book, “Dr. Attwood’s Low-Fat Prescription for Kids” (Viking), in which he prescribes plant-based, low-fat diets before kids get used to anything else.

Medical research shows that some children as young as 3 display elevated cholesterol levels and have fatty streaks in their arteries.

But many pediatricians, including those associated with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), think Attwood has gone too far in trying to break children away from the meat, cheese and whole milk in the traditional American children’s diet, because they feel those foods are essential to building young bodies.

Attwood acknowledges that when he began writing he expected his approach to be seen as radical. But he has been surprised by the positive reaction of parents - and it’s them he is trying to reach.

“Parents are much more concerned about what their children are eating than what they themselves are eating,” he said. “Concerned parents are ready for this approach, and they are upset that they haven’t been told it before. And it will be the parents who eventually persuade their pediatricians.”

One pediatrician who disagrees with Attwood is Dr. Ronald E. Kleinman, who with Dr. Michael S. Jellinek wrote “Let Them Eat Cake” (Villard), published last year.

He also was on the cholesterol education program committee that rejected a proposal to screen young children for cholesterol on the theory that there is plenty of time later in life - in the early 20s, he says - to worry about high cholesterol and heart disease.

Although Kleinman agrees that heart disease starts in the early years, he says, “We’re not very sophisticated yet in determining which children are going to have progressive problems and which are not. … We don’t want to frighten children by telling them they are going to get heart disease. And we don’t want to recommend diet changes that could interfere with their growth.”

The cholesterol education program recommends cholesterol testing only for children and adolescents who are “at risk” for heart disease. That includes those with a family history of cardiovascular problems or who have at least one parent with high blood pressure or a cholesterol count over 240, or one who is obese or smokes cigarettes.

Attwood gives cholesterol tests to all his patients from age 2 at least once. Not doing so can mean missing someone at risk, he says.

“High cholesterol is the basic risk factor,” Attwood says.

“We found one child with high cholesterol, then discovered his father and grandparents all were at risk. None of them had ever been tested.”

With only a couple of exceptions, no one with a cholesterol count lower than 150 ever died of heart disease, including those who smoke or have hypertension, Attwood says.

But it’s one thing to lead a kid to vegetarian pizza and another thing to make him drink skim milk.

Though Kleinman favors healthful eating, he says children should be allowed a varied diet of meats, fish, dairy products and even high-fat foods such as ice cream and pastries once in a while.

He also sees “dairy products and meat as a valuable part of a child’s diet. Few food sources are as rich in iron, phosphorus and other minerals as meat and dairy.”

To Attwood, however, childhood is a time to build low-fat habits and to learn to limit dairy products and meat protein, both of which, he says, will contribute to health problems later in life.

It is easier for children to start a low-fat diet than for adults to change back from a high-fat diet, Attwood says.

The American Academy of Pediatrics advises that children 2 years and older eat a varied diet with a maximum of 30 percent of total calories from fat, with less than 10 percent of total calories from saturated fatty acids and less than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day.

Skim or low-fat milk is not recommended for children younger than 2 because of the high protein and electrolyte content and low calorie density of these milks. The Academy recommends screenings for children over age 2 whose family histories put them at risk for high cholesterol.