Nutrition, healthy eating habits, and kids

Erica Kenney, Associate Professor of Public Health Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, answers three questions posed by Discovery Museum CEO Marie Beam

Discovery Soundbites highlight expert voices on matters of importance to kids, families, and caregivers. Topics will range from parenting, emerging science research, child development, and accessibility to parent and child mental health, nature play, early learning, caregiver support, and more. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Well, hello everyone. Welcome to Discovery Soundbites. My name is Marie Beam. I am proud to serve as CEO of Discovery Museum in Acton, Massachusetts, where we invite children and their families to explore science and nature through play, indoors and out. I'm delighted to be joined today by Erica Kenney. Erica is Associate Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the TH Pan School of Public Health. Trained in social epidemiology and planned behavior change, Erica's research focuses on identifying successful, efficient, and cost-effective strategies to help children form healthy habits for life. Erica, thank you so much for being with us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Thanks so much for inviting me. It's really a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Well, I have three questions for you. As you know, Erica, this is the way we always do this. So I'm going to jump right in and let's get started. Our first question is: from your perspective, what is the biggest opportunity now to improve the lives of kids and families?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, that's a really big question. And I think there could be a lot of answers, answers to that. But I think from my particular perspective and the research that I do, I think that improving our world so that it's easier to access and afford healthy foods. And so that the default for our kids and families isn't just having a flood of really hyper-palatable, highly processed products that become really easy for us to overeat and also make health eating less appealing. I feel like that is a really critical opportunity that we have right now. You know, nutrition is just so important for shaping our health across our lives and helping children form healthy habits really early on, really sets them up for a healthier life in adulthood. It's one of the most important things that we can do in childhood for setting people up for a healthy life later on. And the way that we have our environment set up right now, both in the US but really worldwide, is just not really conducive to being able to have healthy nutrition and healthy habits early on. Because we have all these really like hard to resist, plentiful products that have been kind of engineered to just hit all of our pleasure centers and make it really difficult to stop eating. And there's everywhere we go and everywhere kids go in particular. And other side, you know, healthy foods are less available, they're harder to prepare for parents who are are often strapped for time, they're less affordable, all these things. So I do think that focusing in on that is really a huge opportunity that we have right now to improve the lives of kids and families. And I think that there's a lot of energy around that right now, which is really exciting.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Oh, that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

So, what can we do at home or in our communities? Yeah, that's another big question. And there's there's so many things. I mean, I think, you know, from supporting healthy school meals at your local school. So your school nutrition folks at your school are probably working really hard on this, and they may appreciate your support and partnership to supporting efforts in your community to help those with less resources access healthy foods like community food pantries or places that do sort of grocery deliveries for folks who are having difficulty affording healthy foods. But the most important thing, actually, from my perspective right now, might be a little bit surprising. And I it might be something that other folks who come from other perspectives are actually may have talked about on this podcast, but it's actually limiting kids' access to phones and social media in particular. The reason is because of the sort of overwhelming amount of marketing for less healthy foods that kids see on these devices and adults. So, you know, we have like decades of research, really, really strong research on television advertising that showed that, you know, back in the days when it was broadcast and cable TV was our sort of main source of media exposure. There was a lot of advertising for kind of junk foods on those platforms. And a lot of really good research clearly tied exposure to that, to overeating, to like increased risk of obesity and all the health problems that can result from that. So we know that advertising can be really powerful, like the and marketing for for unhealthy foods can be really powerful to the point where, you know, you can be trying your best as a parent to provide your child with healthy foods. But the moment you're in the grocery store and they're seeing their sort of like their favorite characters or they see foods that have been advertised to them, you know, in the grocery store or or at the mall or whatever it is, it's it can be, they always, you know, want it and are going to be asking for it. And it's a very powerful thing. So what is concerning, I think, about digital media and that landscape that we're in right now, is that all of that is being kind of amplified to the nth degree. So there's the research on this is just kind of coming out. My team is doing some research. There are researchers all over the country that are trying to look at this. But what we're finding is that, you know, when kids are on social media in particular, and that includes YouTube too, including YouTube in that kind of bucket of social media, they're seeing just first of all, way more ads and marketing for other products that we maybe don't want them to be seeing. But also it's it's very different than the sort of, you know, advertising that maybe some of some of us who are adults kind of grew up with on TV, where it was like just kind of one blanket ad that everybody saw. Now it's just so hyper-tailored to what children's interests are and who they're sort of who they sort of look up to online and things like that. And you also have a lot of these sort of influencers that kids have these kind of almost, I guess, I guess you would say parasocial, but these kind of relationships with where they really look up to them and trust them, often kind of promoting these products to kids. And that is likely to be a lot more powerful and stickier, I think, in terms of driving kind of cravings or desires for some of these foods that we really don't, we know are not going to be good for kids in the long run. So I think that's just one of the things that I'm most concerned about. And I think really we need to focus on, and there's a lot of reasons to focus, of course, on social media exposure. But I think the marketing, limiting kids' exposure to marketing is actually a really big one.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

So interesting because that really is about taking it back to the root origin, isn't it? Yeah. Parents having to fight fewer of those battles at home about food choices. Yeah. Totally fascinating. Our last question What is one bright spot that you are seeing?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

I'm seeing a lot of bright spots, you know, like I really am. I think there's, I mean, just in general, as I said at the beginning, there's so much energy, I think, around, you know, trying to help kids have access to healthier foods, like just in a lot of different ways. But specifically around this issue of of social media overexposure, you know, seeing uh how there's just a lot of parents kind of banding together and and working together in their communities to try to do things, you know, all the way ranging from uh doing some of these sort of like working together to make sure that you're limiting kids' access to smartphones together so that it's not just like you're the one parent who does it and your kid hates you and you're, you know, your kid is isolated and all this stuff, like you're banding together to like do it as a community, all the way up to some of the sort of, you know, advocating for for regulations that can protect youth from from some of the documented harms of sort of excessive device use and social media. So I think just seeing how much there's this sort of grassroots real swell of support that's crossing a lot of political lines, you know, that isn't this sort of a sort of hyperpartisan issue these days, to try to protect children in this way, I think is is really encouraging. So that is a bright spot that I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

That is great news. Erica, thank you so much. Really, our appreciation to Erica Kenny for joining us today. I think everyone who is listening, especially our very generous sponsors that have made Discovery Sound Bites possible. If you'd like to learn more about Discovery Museum and our work, you can find us at discoveryapon.org. Come play with us.