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[...] Researchers found children who had a vegetarian diet had similar mean body mass index (BMI), height, iron, vitamin D, and cholesterol levels compared to those who consumed meat. The findings showed evidence that children with a vegetarian diet had almost two-fold higher odds of having underweight, which is defined as below the third percentile for BMI. There was no evidence of an association with overweight or obesity.
Underweight is an indicator of undernutrition, and may be a sign that the quality of the child's diet is not meeting the child's nutritional needs to support normal growth. For children who eat a vegetarian diet, the researchers emphasized access to healthcare providers who can provide growth monitoring, education and guidance to support their growth and nutrition.
[...] A limitation of the study is that researchers did not assess the quality of the vegetarian diets. The researchers note that vegetarian diets come in many forms and the quality of the individual diet may be quite important to growth and nutritional outcomes. The authors say further research is needed to examine the quality of vegetarian diets in childhood, as well as growth and nutrition outcomes among children following a vegan diet, which excludes meat and animal derived products such as dairy, egg, and honey.
Journal Reference:
Laura J. Elliott et al. Vegetarian Diet, Growth, and Nutrition in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Cohort Study [open] Pediatrics 2022
DOI: 10.1542/peds.2021-052598
(Score: 5, Touché) by Mykl on Thursday May 05 2022, @03:36AM (16 children)
...what I think you think it means.
These two things do not have the same meaning.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Entropy on Thursday May 05 2022, @03:44AM
Don't forget: "Underweight is an indicator of undernutrition, and may be a sign that the quality of the child's diet is not meeting the child's nutritional needs to support normal growth"
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 05 2022, @06:08AM (7 children)
Well, it balances out, you see. While vegan kids are severely underweight, fast food kids are severely overweight, and they have similar (un)health levels.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Thursday May 05 2022, @08:25AM (6 children)
Vegan and fast food are not the only options. A healthy omnivorous diet is demonstrably the best choice for humans.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 05 2022, @09:16AM (5 children)
Yes. No doubt about this.
Judging by the state the health of the nation is in, though, I guess you and me are the only ones who know that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @12:03PM (3 children)
I don't know how it is with you and your kids, but when we get fast food for our brood it's because we're too fucking tired to cook and behind on the dishes. It got better as they got older, because teens need less constant monitoring (except when social media makes them suicidal, but that's another topic). So we get garbage food less now. But I contend that the average American is less stupid about nutrition than most people think, and more exhausted.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 05 2022, @01:55PM (2 children)
Yeah, we were a lot more healthy when one income was enough to feed a family and someone had time to actually cook some food instead of relying on microwave dinners only.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday May 05 2022, @04:02PM (1 child)
You can afford to eat better. Both time and money. You just need to educate yourself. Which does take time, but once you've done so, you will be happier. No one should need to sustain themselves on microwave dinners.
Slow Cookers, Ninja Foodis, Rice Cookers, Vitamix Blender, or other time savers, help a ton. Easy, healthy recipes are out there.
Here's a nice one, if you want a decent pasta sauce or tomato soup. (Honestly, we just use the same recipe for both.)
Vitamix Recipe *You can look one up, if you like measuring things.*:
Bunch of Tomatos (canned or fresh, whatever you think may taste yummy, also a good way to use not so good old tomatos that are still technically edible)
1 stick of butter or about 1/2 cup of some sort of oily something. More or less, to your taste. Sure, that much butter may not be too good for you, but it sure tastes good.
Good bit of Oregano, Basil, or other spices.
Salt to taste.
Sugar (just a bit to cut the acid, not much, can also use honey)
Just make sure it's all clean and you cut the stem out of the tomato. (May not need to cut that little bit where the stem came out of the tomato, but I always do.)
Put it all in the blender and turn it on. The Vitamix I have doesn't have a "Soup setting", but you can use it to make soup. Mine is designed to stop at 6:30 seconds. Just let it run until it's done and stops. It will be hot and perfect to serve.
While the Tomato soup is making, you can be prepping other food, but now you have a healthy component to your meal.
Usually when I make that, there's enough left over to do a second meal of soup or pasta. Whatever we didn't do the night before. Almost always do sandwiches with the soup.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday May 05 2022, @04:05PM
Uh, I forget, I usually also put a little onion and garlic in there.
Also, I've just chucked whole Zucchini or Yellow Squash in there to add to it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bmimatt on Thursday May 05 2022, @07:00PM
There are dozens of us! DOZENS!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @10:58AM (5 children)
And this is why you have to watch out with putting two statistical conclusions out of context. While they seem contradicting at first (caught me as well),
statistically they could both be valid. I haven't looked into detail, but I expect it to be something in the lines like:
The first statement is about the 9,000 children, where they didn't find any significant differences within the classes on various parameters. (Done by t-test or anova)
The second statement is about the distribution within these classes. They aren't completely the same, but small enought to result in the first statement being true and second statement being observed (example: one class shows 0.1% underweight, while the other shows 0.2% underweight = double the odds, chi^2 test required to test significance).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @12:13PM (4 children)
You can't conclude something is similar or dissimilar based on statistical significance. That requires understanding the practical significance.
In fact the statistical significance only tells you the sample size. If it is stat sig you had big enough sample, if not then it was too small for how variable your measurements are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @01:59PM (3 children)
Not sure where you got that from, but as far as I know the whole statistical field is based on the definition below (from wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance [wikipedia.org]
If statistical significance would only mean something in correlation with a sample size, no statistical test would ever produce anything useful. I think what you try to say is that statistical significance tells you more about (unknown) errors, but it doesn't have to get smaller when you get a larger sample size (I know this from experience).
Variabillity within your samples can be a trait of your population. A population with large variabillity will result in a sample with a large variabillity, increasing your sample size won't fix that. Even stronger, on a schientific level it's something you might not want, because you're introducing a bias into your samples if you do this (big no-no).
Tests work often around this variabillity (requiring equal distribution of samples), resulting sometimes in a lower significance. BUT, that's not a shame in itself. It often means you have to tone down your statement, use other tests (e.g. non-parametric tests) AND mention that you saw this great variabillity, to justify your choice in used tests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @04:21PM (2 children)
If you measure the heights of a billion people with blood type A vs blood type B and find a statistically significant difference of 0.1 mm, are they similar or dissimilar?
Similar, of course, because 0.1 mm has no practical impact. The statistical significance just shows you collected enough data to find a tiny difference.
Likewise comparing two groups of n=3, will be statistically insignificant even if one is 2 ft taller than the other on average.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @04:50PM (1 child)
First, I doubt that such experiment would result in a statistically significant difference. This would mean you do a test on the mean (which is 0.1 mm different) and the deviation would be very (extremely) narrow. But let's go with what you say and such thing would be significantly different, then the two classes would not be the same, so dissimilar. It would mean that people with one blood type have a good chance to be, on average, slightly larger.
"Practical impact" has no use in statistics, who decides what's practical? It's not objective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @06:24PM
If n = 1 billion even very tiny differences will be significant. Probably orders of magnitude less than 0.1 mm.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday May 05 2022, @03:33PM
My child is a lacto-ovo vegetarian. Meaning, they eat dairy and egg products. My child is quite well fed and quite tall for the age range.
You can do a good job as a parent and make sure they get the things they need to grow well. Or you can do a poor job as a parent and feed them McDs, fries, and a shake. Or you can do a poor job as a parent and feed them other poor nutritional value foods. You don't have to be vegetarian to have a malnourished child and they don't have to be skinny for them to be malnourished.
My child eats beets, asparagus, and other vegetables, that a lot of kids won't touch. (I didn't introduce my revulsion to beets in my child, because I didn't suggest that they are unfit for human consumption.) My child also eats plenty of protein, carbs, and other things that my child needs to grow healthy and strong. I also, don't force my child to sit there and eat every speck of food on their plate. I do however, require that they eat a good amount and variety of food. They may end up eating meat when they are old enough to make their own decisions, but for now, I am the one that makes sure they get what they need. As such, no meat.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"