CHILDREN'S HEALTH Study shows bad eating habits beginning in early childhood

Parents also were letting toddlers and infants eat certain foods too early in life.
SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Even before their second birthday, many American children are developing the same bad eating habits that plague the nation's adults -- too much fat, sugar and salt and too few fruits and vegetables.
A new study of more than 3,000 youngsters found significant numbers of infants and toddlers are downing french fries, pizza, candy and soda.
Children 1 to 2 years require about 950 calories per day, but the study found that the median intake for that age group is 1,220 calories -- an excess of nearly 30 percent. For those 7 months to 11 months old, the daily caloric surplus was about 20 percent.
"By 24 months, patterns look startlingly similar to some of the problematic American dietary patterns," said an overview of the Feeding Infants & amp; Toddlers Study, commissioned by baby-food maker Gerber Products Co.
Recent research has found that roughly one in every five Americans is now considered obese, double the rate in the mid-1980s.
Throughout life
"[Your children] are watching you -- they see what you do," said Chicago-area dietitian Jodie Shield, who has written two books on child nutrition. "We're on a very dangerous course if we do not make some changes in helping parents step up to the plate and be role models."
"Across cultures, it's a positive thing to overfeed your chubby little baby," said Dorothy DeLessio, a dietitian at Brown University Medical School in Providence, R.I. But she added that Americans were crossing over to negative patterns of "round-cheeked overweight toddler, overweight preschooler, overweight child, overweight adult."
An overview of the FITS study was presented Saturday at a meeting of the American Dietetic Association. The complete study results are to be published in the association's journal in January.
The study involved random telephone interviews conducted in 2002 that asked parents or primary caregivers what their youngsters ages 4 months to 2 years ate that particular day.
Up to a third of the children under 2 consumed no fruits or vegetables, according to the survey.