For their study, the CDC researchers picked out about 3.100 kids and teens in the 2 to 19 age range, and asked them what and where they ate in the 24 hours leading up to the survey.
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The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there’s also been no change in the proportion of calories that kids get from fast food daily.
After the collation of data, the experts were able to discover that 17 percent of the participants under the adolescent age bracket obtain their daily calories from fast food items, while only nine percent of younger children were found to have the same finding.
The report found that children eat the equivalent of a small hamburger every day, said Kristi King, a senior clinical dietitian with Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
The researchers did not note any significant differences in caloric consumption based on income level; wealthier kids got about 13 percent of their calories from fast food, compared to 11.5 percent for poorer children. For Asian children, the rate is much lower, with only eight percent of the study subjects’ daily calorie consumption coming from fast food. That means kids average about 245 calories each day from fast food.
The current study did not present the total calorie intake of children daily but according to previous governmental investigations, kids consume approximately 1,900 calories in a day.
In addition to impacting children’s health and obesity rates, other research suggests that too much fast food could also take a toll on their academic success.
Though the study’s authors didn’t make any recommendations about what they found, the CDC has previously offered suggestions for reducing the amount of fast foods kids eat on a daily basis, such as regulating the amount of fast food advertising targeted at children.
By now, we know that consistently eating fast food is not a good choice for our waistlines or our health. Dietitian Bonnie Taub-Dix, owner of BetterThanDieting.com, said, “Families eat (at fast-food restaurants) for a lot of reasons”.
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A number of proposals have aimed to reduce fast food marketing to kids or to increase healthy menu options.
