Self-regulation of Energy Intake in Children, Questioned
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To the Editor.
The paper by Shea et al1 is misleading. The observed coefficients of variability of the caloric intakes of children at individual meals and snacks were much larger than the variability of the total daily intakes, 46.5 to 165.8 vs 30.3. However, the main reason for this is statistical. The variability of the sum of a total of such items is less than that of the individual items. For example, if you time your daily mile run, the variability of each day's run will be substantially less than the variability of the total weekly times.




