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 "American Teens Are Exercising More, Watching Less TV, And Eating More Vegetables" Share: 
  
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 American teenagers are eating more vegetables, getting more exercise, watching less television, and eating fewer portions of junk food that’s high in sugar, according to a new study by the University of Massachusetts in Boston. 
  
 Researchers collected data on 35,000 children aged 11 to 16 from 2001 to 2009. They found that average Body Mass Index (BMI) for the teens dropped between 2005 and 2009, and that over the course of the total decade, consumption of fruits and vegetables nearly doubled from two to four days per week to five or six days per week. Younger Americans also ate breakfast more times per week over this period, while their weekly sugary drink consumption fell by 20 percent. The number of days they exercised for at least 60 minutes went up significantly from 4.33 days per week to 4.53 days per week. 
  
 The study is the latest in a series of encouraging reports suggesting that Americans are beginning to take better care of their physical health. “It’s only recently, in the past decade, that some studies have begun to see some leveling off [in behavior that causes obesity],” said lead study author Ronald Iannotti. 
  
 In June, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that adult obesity rates had risen by a mere 0.2 percent between 2011 and 2012 — a significant decrease from previous years. Other surveys suggest parents may be promoting similar behaviors in their children. For instance, the obesity rate for low-income U.S. children fell significantly for the first time in history between 2008 and 2011. 
  
 These lifestyle changes may be a consequence of changing attitudes about personal health and obesity. But the available data suggests that regulatory changes in nutrition and physical education programs may be driving the positive trend, too. According to the CDC, almost half of all public school districts had banned junk food in vending machines as of last month — a trend that will only continue as new rules go into effect limiting the amount of salt, sugar, and fat that can be used in school cafeterias and vending machines beginning in the 2014-2015 school year. ||||| Photo 
  
 Teenagers are exercising more, consuming less sugar and eating more fruits and vegetables, a trend that may be contributing to a leveling off of obesity rates, a new study shows. 
  
 The findings suggest that aggressive anti-obesity messages aimed at children may be starting to make a difference, albeit a small one. The study was published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday. 
  
 Still, most teenagers were falling short of federal recommendations, which call for children to get at least an hour of physical activity daily, a central message of Michelle Obama’s signature “Let’s Move” campaign. The new data showed that most children engaged in an hour of exercise fewer than five days a week and spent more than two hours a day watching television, chatting online and playing video games. 
  
 The numbers also revealed something of an age and racial divide. Younger children had the highest levels of physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption. But as children got older, the frequency of eating junk foods and engaging in sedentary behaviors crept up, along with average body mass index, a crude measure of obesity. 
  
 Black and Hispanic adolescents lagged behind whites on almost every measure of progress, even after the researchers tried to take into account the influence of socioeconomic factors. 
  
 “In some ways you can interpret what we found positively by saying we’re beginning to bend the curve, and hopefully we’ll start seeing a downward trend in obesity,” said Dr. Ronald J. Iannotti, a study author and chair of the department of exercise and health sciences at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “But there’s large room for improvement.” 
  
 The study analyzed data from a national survey of tens of thousands of schoolchildren in grades 6 through 10, which was carried out once every four years from roughly 2001 to 2010. 
  
 Childhood obesity rates, which have more than doubled since 1980, rose slightly between 2001 and 2006, then leveled off by 2010, at roughly 13 percent. The proportion of those who were overweight also plateaued at around 17 percent. 
  
 Obesity tends to follow children into adulthood, raising the risk of heart disease and cancer as well as Type 2 diabetes, a disease that has also risen sharply among children. 
  
 In the past year, other studies have hinted at improvements in the obesity rate among younger children, with some even showing a decline in some cities. But little was known about the extent to which physical and dietary behaviors might have played a role. 
  
 The new study found that at the same time obesity and overweight appeared to level off, there were, on average, very slight increases in physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption and the eating of breakfast, another habit public health officials consider a marker of healthy behavior. 
  
 The opposite trend was seen for behaviors that are widely discouraged. The amount of time teenagers spent watching television fell from about three hours a day in 2001 to less than two-and-a-half hours by 2010. Teenagers also reported drinking slightly fewer soft drinks and eating less candy. 
  
 Boys overall reported more physical activity than girls, but they also watched more television and played more video games and ate fewer fruits and vegetables. 
  
 One expert who was not involved in the study, David B. Allison, the director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said it was impossible from the data to deduce a cause and effect, since any number of factors that could influence obesity rates may have changed over time. 
  
 “We should be very cautious about drawing any attributions about causes based on time trend data,” Dr. Allison said. 
  
 But Dr. Iannotti said the findings seemed to suggest a pattern. “I think the public health message is beginning to be accepted,” he said. |||||

American teenagers may not be the junk food-scarfing, video game-addicted balls of lard the media likes to make them out to be—or at least, they may not be anymore. A new study has found teens in 2010 were eating more vegetables, getting more exercise, drinking less soda, and watching less TV than they were in 2001, the New York Times reports. The study of 35,000 young people aged 11 to 16 found they were eating fruits and vegetables nearly twice as often, drinking 20% fewer sugary beverages, and the number of times they exercised for an hour or more had gone up from 4.33 days per week to 4.53 days per week, Think Progress reports. And between 2005 and 2009, the teens' average BMI went down. So that's the good news. The bad news is that the teens still weren't meeting the federal recommendations for an hour of exercise a day, while they did manage to fit in at least two hours a day watching TV, chatting online, and playing video games, the Times reports. The study also found younger teens tended to get more exercise and eat more healthfully, with their habits growing unhealthier as they got older. And black and Hispanic teens were behind white teens in almost every category, even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors.