Most of us are worried about high fructose corn syrup, but just like those ridiculous commercials say, few of us can articulate exactly why. Now Princeton researchers have uncovered some evidence that high fructose corn syrup actually prompts much more weight gain than sugar, even when overall caloric intake is the same.

Researchers from the department of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute found that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup along with their usual rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas. Continue reading »

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I’m a veteran of two c-section births and a staunch opponent of the sanctimommy attitude that it’s somehow the worst thing ever. That said, even I was shocked by this news: The US c-section rate has now topped 32 percent. That means one out of every three children in the United States is born that way — or was in 2007, the last for which figures were available.

That sobering statistic comes from a National Center for Health Statistics report released yesterday. Continue reading »

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If you’ve got kids, and those kids eat anything you can purchase in a grocery store, you are well-versed in the amount of food marketing that gets aimed at children. Whether it’s natural-crunchy-organic stuff emblazoned with pretty pastoral scenes or the screaming neon corn-based junk at your more traditional stores, companies spend big bucks marketing to children. Food companies spent $1.6 billion on marketing to kids in 2006, while fast food restaurants sold more than 1.2 billion kids’ meals with toys. People form their brand loyalties and food preferences very early in childhood, so getting them as customers as children is key. Continue reading »

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This maybe should be filed under “duh”: A husband-and-wife team of economists have reviewed data from 42 years of studies and drawn the conclusion that college-educated mothers spend a lot more time ferrying kids around to activities than they used to, and that they do this in order to secure them a spot in a good college and eventually a high-paying job.

Garey and Valerie Ramey, who both are economists at the University of California — San Diego, noticed a trend they found troubling when they moved to a neighborhood in San Diego with their family. Children’s schedules were packed with activities, and soon both of them — but especially Valerie — found themselves caught up in what they dubbed “the rugrat race.”

The decided to look at what might be driving this phenomenon, so they reviewed data from 12 U.S. surveys taken between 1965 and 2007, describing how people spend their time. Continue reading »

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As much as schools emphasize reading (we’re into the blessedly final week of Readers are Leaders over here) and parents are told to read to kids from the time they can open their little newborn eyes, kids don’t spend a whole lot of time reading on their own when given the choice to do other things.

According to this Washington Post story, only 25 minutes of kids’ 7.5 hours of entertainment a day were usually spent reading a book, based on a Kaiser Family Foundation study. Department of Education statistics found that 24 percent of 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds say they never or hardly ever read a book for fun on their own, up from 8 and 9 percent respectively in 1984.

Despite all that, sales of children’s books have remained healthy Continue reading »

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The diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children has skyrocketed since the criteria for diagnosis was broadened in the mid-1990s. Now, a growing number of experts are pushing for new diagnoses that more accurately reflect the behaviors of children with the diagnosis.

In a paper published in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, researchers Erik Parens and Josephine Johnston pointed out the difficulty of diagnosing any psychiatric disorders in children. Frequently, children diagnosed with bipolar disorder show behaviors that aren’t aligned with the disease’s criteria. Continue reading »

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Do you allow your children to play with plastic toys? Have they seen a Disney movie or even own toys or clothing emblazoned with Sleeping Beauty or Lightning McQueen? Do you push — gasp — a Graco stroller?

Then you are not the target market for this list by Pamela Redmond Satran, the self-styled “baby name expert” who runs nameberry.com. recently on the Daily Beast, she shared her The Elite’s Top 50 Baby Names.

Mock though I do, I admit her description of an elite’s baby-naming process sounds a lot like mine: Continue reading »

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