By Anne Underwood 

Kylee Smith, 5, of Richmond, Va., loves cheese—grilled cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, cheese quesadillas. It’s what she doesn’t like that has her mom worried. Kylee won’t eat meat, other than chicken nuggets. Her vegetable consumption is limited to tomato sauce—but only on pizza, not spaghetti. Most nights, her mother has to prepare a special dish just for her. “If we’re eating something she doesn’t like, she won’t even sit next to us,” says her mother, Jean-Marie.

If this sounds familiar, take heart. Children can be notoriously picky eaters—and today’s snack-food culture makes it even harder to channel their tastes in healthy directions. But research is shedding new light on how food preferences are formed—and what we can do to promote healthy eating. The good news: your choices aren’t limited to sneaking puréed vegetables into foods or battling it out over broccoli.

One of the most surprising findings is that it’s never too early to start—not even during pregnancy. Flavorful compounds from a mother’s diet cross the placenta into amniotic fluid, which babies in the third trimester swallow at the rate of a quart a day. “Babies develop preferences for these foods long before they actually eat them,” says Julie Mennella, a biopsychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. Similarly, during lactation, flavors pass from the mother’s bloodstream into breast milk. Mennella has done studies showing that babies whose moms drank carrot juice or ate fruits while breast-feeding liked carrot and peach baby foods better than formula-fed infants did.

Statins used to be for aging boomers and their parents. Now the American Academy of Pediatrics says the cholesterol-lowering drugs can help kids as young as 8 who suffer from extremely high cholesterol levels. (The FDA has approved most statins for kids as young as 10, and pravastatin for those as young as 8.) Doctors stress that these guidelines do not mean that all obese kids should take statins.

In a recent clinical report in the journal Pediatrics, Dr. Stephen Daniels, pediatrician in chief at the Children’s Hospital in Denver, said kids between the ages of 2 and 10 with a family history of early heart disease or those with an unknown family history or other cardiovascular-disease risk factors, such as obesity or diabetes, should be screened with a fasting lipid profile. For overweight kids with a high triglyceride concentration or a low HDL (good) cholesterol concentration, weight management is the main treatment. For overweight kids with an LDL (bad) cholesterol reading of 190 or greater, even after trying diet and exercise, doctors should consider medications. The side effects of statins: mainly the elevation of liver enzymes and muscle inflammation. But Daniels says fewer than 1 percent of adolescents get a meaningful side effect that makes them want to stop taking the drugs. Dr. Frank Greer, chair of the AAP’s committee on nutrition, says, “If your father had a heart attack at age 27, and you have the same lipid profile as your dad, what’s the greater risk?”

By Tina Peng

Caffeine is the world’s most common mood-altering drug, and more kids are consuming it in higher quantities. About a third of 12- to 24-year-olds chug energy drinks, which are often marketed to teens. How much is too much? The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate Americans’ caffeine intake, but Health Canada recommends that children ages 4 to 6 ingest no more than 45mg of caffeine a day (one cup of tea or one can of cola); kids ages 7 to 9 no more than 62.6mg, and those ages 10 to 12 no more than 85mg. Teens ages 13 and up should not exceed 400mg, the same as a healthy adult. An 8-ounce cup of brewed coffee contains about 135mg of caffeine; an 8-ounce Red Bull has about 76mg.

Because children weigh less than adults, they’re more susceptible to the chemical’s effects, says child psychiatrist Elizabeth Burger, a spokes-person for the American Academy for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. As with adults, caffeine can keep young children up at night and contribute to higher blood pressure, a racing heart rate and a grouchy or overly excited mood. During the summer, caffeine can quickly make your child dehydrated.

By Christina Gillham 

First, the good news: The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Back to Sleep program, which teaches parents to put their babies to sleep on their backs instead of their stomachs, has helped reduce cases of sudden infant death syndrome by 40 percent. The bad news is that babies are now spending too little time on their stomachs, a position that helps them strengthen their back, neck and shoulder muscles so they can roll over and, later, crawl. In a survey released last week, two thirds of occupational and physical therapists reported seeing an increase in early motor delays in children. The American Physical Therapy Association is now urging parents to give babies more “tummy time” while they are awake and supervised. TIP SHEET’s Christina Gillham spoke to Judy Towne Jennings, a pediatric physical therapist and spokesperson for the APTA. (Readers can get more tips by clicking on “Tummy Time Tools” at www.apta.org/consumer.)

Gillham: Why is tummy time important for babies?
Jennings: All development comes from the tummy position. If a baby doesn’t develop the core strength—the muscles of the chest, the tummy, the back, the neck—they also don’t have those muscles to use for breath control, for the tongue moving back and forth and for the ability to form their mouths to do speech. Babies don’t have to use their muscles if they’re sitting in a car seat. They don’t have to use muscles if they’re in a swing or a bouncer seat.

Several new medical studies are reopening the debate over which men should be screened for prostate cancer, at what age the testing should stop and how doctors should interpret the test results, especially in obese men. What the news means for you and your family.

• The background: Prostate cancer, the second most common cancer in men after skin cancer, kills about 29,000 Americans a year. To detect the disease early, many doctors give men 50 and older an annual screening test for an elevated level of a protein called prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Higher-risk patients, including African-Americans and those with a family history of the disease, should get screened at 40 and again at 45. Traditionally, most doctors have considered PSA readings above 4 as the cutoff for performing another screen and then a biopsy, but they are now moving toward looking at how PSA levels change over time as a better predictor. “PSA is very inexact,” says Dr. Durado Brooks, director of prostate cancer for the American Cancer Society. “You can have a very low PSA and still have cancer.”

Rent “Smart People.” Dennis Quaid heads a terrific cast (Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, Sarah Jessica Parker) as a monumentally self-absorbed widower and college professor in this sharp indie comedy about a dysfunctional family that’s, well, too smart for its own good.

Hear “This Is the Life” by Amy McDonald. This Scottish singer has hit our shores with an album that is exuberant in its folksy energy. Her quick guitar and fast-paced lyrics make for a debut that is sure to leave a bounce in your step. Standout track: the title song ($13.98).

Visit Philadelphia for “Bug Fest” at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Watch a roach race, touch live insects and sample creepy-crawly cuisine at the Ace of Arthropods cookout that’s sure to please the kids, even as it grosses them out (Aug. 16–17; ansp.org).