Early in my adolescent years, my pediatrician noticed that the iron levels in my blood tests were low, so she prescribed me an iron supplement to take once a day. My new anemia diagnosis scared my mother into buying expensive multivitamins in bulk, and she encouraged me to take two multivitamins every morning because they would “stop diseases from happening”. While these multivitamins did provide the iron I needed, I wondered if taking these broad multivitamins was necessary since I wasn’t deficient in nutrients other than iron. There is a common misconception that taking vitamins and supplements will prevent chronic diseases and improve health outcomes. However, research does not support these wide-ranging health claims.
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Some of my fondest memories of growing up are of playing sports. Although I did not become a Division I college or professional athlete, the experience taught me invaluable lessons in perseverance, teamwork, and confidence. Sports wasn’t only beneficial to me. Studies have shown many attributes of youth sport, including structured and consistent physical activity and social support important to childhood development and health and perhaps lower levels of depression. What was a crucial and irreplacable childhood experience for me is unfortunately not equally accessible to all children and adolescents.
It seems that kids are born loving sweets, and in fact, this is true. Across cultures, babies show an innate preference for sweet flavors, which helps them to survive by ensuring that they enjoy the sweet taste of their natural first food, breast milk. Babies also tend to like salty and “energy-dense” foods, and they show a universal dislike of foods that taste bitter. This discourages ingestion of toxic plants or other substances that could be harmful. If babies are born loving sweets and hating vegetables, how can their eating habits become more aligned with what we would consider a healthy diet?
 Jenny Sun, PhD The impact of medication use during childhood and adolescence is understudied. Children have traditionally been excluded from randomized trials largely due to ethical concerns and the challenges of obtaining consent of minors, resulting in a lack of evidence to inform treatment decision making. Unfortunately, this lack of evidence-based prescribing has immediate and potentially lifelong consequences. An estimated 200,000 children in the United States visit the emergency department each year due to an adverse drug reaction. Beyond these urgent consequences, there is emerging research that points to long term impacts, specifically raising the question: could this lack of evidence on drug safety also be related to the increasing burden of youth-onest type 2 diabetes?
Americans eat way too much salt. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 90% of Americans consume more sodium than the recommended 2,300mg per day. This is a huge public health problem because excess sodium leads to high blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. While many of us know to limit the amount of salt we sprinkle on our food, this will do little to address the problem because 70% of the sodium in our diet comes from packaged and restaurant foods. If we want to reduce sodium consumption, we should focus less on how we prepare food for ourselves at home and worry more about what companies put in our food. But how do we get them to change?
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