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Children need help to be healthy
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Published: August 9, 2009
With one in three kids in the United States overweight or obese, millions of children demonstrate how more destructive it is to gain excess weight at a young age compared to adding it later in life. Dietary inflation has spawned obesity rates among children between the ages of 6 and 19 that have not just doubled as seen with their parents and grandparents, but have tripled.
Pediatricians have now seemingly morphed into internists combating the steady wave of hypertension and diabetes ravaging the nation's youth.
Within this epidemic is a dark cloud that hovers over the future health and productivity of the next generation. Scientists predict that many kids will never overcome their obesity with up to 80 percent of them retaining their plus-size frames as adults.
There is also the fear among experts who forebode an exponential increase in heart disease, cancer and diabetes as these children emerge past their adolescence. In addition to the disability that awaits them during what would otherwise be the prime of their lives, there is the grim prediction that the morbidity and mortality incurred by this epidemic may produce America's first generation to have shorter lifetime expectancy than its immediate predecessor.
The increasing size of our youth has paralleled disturbing changes in our environment and social life. While statistics have shown 18-fold increases in fast-food spending since 1970, the expansion of portion sizes since that time has exceeded federal guidelines. Alarming correlations have been drawn between high fructose corn syrup's continual replacement of sugar in thousands of food products and the government subsidies on corn production that likely facilitate it.
A revealing 1997 survey released by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center concluded that American children spend more time watching television and videotapes and playing videogames than doing anything else except sleeping.
Such activities likely trigger obesity in two primary ways: decreasing energy expenditure by displacing physical activity and by increasing dietary intake either during viewing or by enhancing exposure to food advertisements.
The wicked allure of unhealthy foods is largely in their high accessibility, greater convenience, cheaper pricing and their high sugar, fat and salt content, which makes them tastier snacks overall. In the April 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Marlene Schwartz of Yale University concluded that cereals marketed to children are denser in energy, sugar and sodium and fail to meet national nutrition standards more often when compared to those not marketed to them. A study in the June 2007 issue of the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine by Lisa Powell of the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago notes that the dramatic increase in childhood obesity rates doesn't mirror similar changes in food advertising exposure, but that advertising is likely now more efficacious in targeting its pediatric audiences through sophisticated use of TV characters.
Children are clearly viewed as a viable food-market audience that represents billions of dollars in revenues. This is the toxic environment in which our children have unknowingly become prey.
With public-opinion polls now reflecting growing national support for environmental changes such as restricting food advertising, limiting soft drinks in schools and mandating for calorie labeling on restaurant menus, a significant opportunity to curb the childhood-obesity epidemic is at hand.
Public policy addressing this issue should be framed as a means to defend children's right to nutritious food and also their health. Government must be lobbied to facilitate opportunities for physical fitness such as biking and walking trails and recreational spaces such as parks and public pools as well as health-food subsidies.
As a kid's first line of defense against this epidemic, parents must take responsibility for stocking their kitchens with healthy foods and leaving the unhealthy foods in the grocery store. However, parents now also have the new challenge of limiting children's use of video games and television.
Fighting childhood obesity requires synchronized action by all ranks of society. Our children are not only the next generation's leaders and breadwinners, but also our future caretakers. Perhaps the change we need to see is one that has their best interest at heart?
■ Mikhail C.S.S. Higgins is a senior medical student at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
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