SHAPE UP
Eating right: The theory of one small cookie

By Sally Squires
Washington Post

Just one small cookie a day.

That's all that a team of researchers suggests stands between most Americans' piling on an average of two pounds a year and holding the line against weight gain.

The team led by James O. Hill, director of the Human Nutrition Center at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, came to that conclusion after examining three large national nutrition surveys. Government surveys show that in a little more than a decade, the number of overweight and obese American adults has grown from 56 percent to 65, and the ranks of obese children and teens have swelled from 11 percent to 15.

At this rate, Hill and his colleagues report in this week's edition of the journal Science, four of every 10 American adults will be obese by 2008.

Nor is the obesity epidemic confined to the United States. "The rest of the world is catching up," say Hill and colleagues Holly R. Wyatt, George W. Reed and John C. Peters. "Worldwide, more than 1 billion adults are overweight and over 300 million are obese."

That works out to about 16 percent of the worldwide population of 6 billion, according to figures from the United Nations.

The exact cause of the worldwide weight epidemic is still under debate. But while scientists argue the fine points, Hill and his team propose a simple way to hold the line on weight: a little less food and a little more activity each day.

How little? "To the best of our knowledge, it looks like 100 calories a day less is plenty to hold the line on gaining two pounds a year," Hill says. Making that adjustment can come from eating a little less food (that one small cookie, for example), getting a little more activity, or a little of both.

"Tiny things can make a big difference," Hill says. "If you drink two cans of (nondiet) soft drinks per day and you cut back to one, you've done your 100 calories. In the scheme of things, 100 calories is nothing, and it's something that you can do that is fairly easy."

Of course, trimming some of those 100 calories can also be done with "lifestyle exercises," such as taking the stairs, parking a little farther from a destination or walking to errands.

"Walking a mile, whether done all at once or divided up across the day, burns about 100 calories," Hill notes. And that would "theoretically completely abolish the energy gap and hence the (annual) weight gain for most of the population."