Fat and snack trap

Ah, the good old days, when a stocked pantry meant Diet Coke and energy bars, and the needle on the scale never budged.

To thousands of today’s parents, life is now about Lunchables and Happy Meals, slices of pizza and candy kept around for bribes. Life moves too fast to slow down enough and count every gram of trans fat.

However, the amount of fat parents consume is moving fast, too, says a recent study. Adults living with children consume more fat — the equivalent of a 6-inch pepperoni pizza every week — than adults who do not live with children, say doctors at the University of Iowa and University of Michigan.

The study of more than 6,600 adults found that adults living with children ate 91.4 grams of total fat a day — about 4.9 grams more than those without children in the home. Of that total fat, adults with children ate more saturated fat — 29.9 grams a day compared with 28.2 grams for those without children.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that adults keep their total fat intake between 20 percent and 35 percent of total calories, and saturated fat — the kind found in many dairy products, meat and processed foods — below 10 percent of total calories.

For an adult who eats about 2,000 calories a day, that means total fat should be about 78 grams (about 700 calories) or less, with 20 grams (about 180 calories) or less of the total saturated fat.

In the study, both groups of adults ate more than 2,000 calories a day. The adults with children obtained 35 percent of their calories from fat, 11.5 percent from saturated fat. The subjects without children took 34 percent of calories from fat, with 11 percent of the calories from saturated fat.

The study’s authors said adults with children younger than 17 tend to eat the food that is brought into the house “for the kids.”

“The study looked at adults with kids and adults living without kids,” says Dr. Helena Laroche, a University of Iowa physician and the lead author of the study. “We found that the adults with kids were eating more fat. The study doesn’t tell us why they are consuming more fat — but it hints at it.”

Researchers asked the subjects how often they ate foods such as beef, cheese, pizza and salty snacks. Pretty often, the research found. Those adults also had “significantly higher odds of eating” bacon, milk, sausage, processed meats, peanuts, ice cream, cookies and cake.

What? No Gummi Bears category?

“A lot of parents are eating convenience food,” Dr. Laroche says. “Whether they buy it for the kids to eat or the kids are bringing it into the house, it may be a combination of factors.”

It is sort of a vicious circle of bad food choices for the families with children. Marketers appeal to children. Children badger parents. The high-fat food gets into the house. The food eventually finds its way into the mouths of parents.

Even things that aren’t junk food on the surface are there for the children.

“What am I supposed to do? Buy fat-free cream cheese?” says Karen Leder, a mother of three from Bethesda. “They are not going to eat that.”

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