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American Kids and Weight Problems

by Maia Appleby (this article was recently published in "Metro Parent" magazine).

Here in America, kids and fast food seem to go together like, well… hamburgers and french fries! How easy it is, after a long day at work, to swing by a drive-through window, throw out a few dollars and take dinner home. 

Unfortunately, this trend in the United States, as harmless as it seems, is predisposing millions of children to what the former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop called “the second leading cause of preventable death in America”: obesity.

This is nothing to take casually. Over half of the people in the United States are overweight and about one out of five could be considered obese. This number has been growing steadily for over thirty years.

Children these days are really tipping the scales. The 1999 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, concludes that about 13 percent of children aged 6-11 and 14 percent of adolescents aged 12-19 are overweight. In the early 1970's, these numbers were 4 percent of children and 6 percent of adolescents.

Many people assume that children should not have any restrictions on their fat intake, for fear that they won't get enough nutrients for their growing bodies. This is not true. Once a child is beyond infancy, what she eats is setting her up for a lifetime of either the tendency to become overweight or not. She may eat like a bird at age 35, but still be heavy due to her childhood eating patterns.

Part of the reason for this is that each person, no matter what shape or size he is, has a certain number of fat cells, which are usually formed at two critical periods of a person's life - in early childhood and at puberty. When an adult eats a lot of fatty food, the existing fat cells generally expand, causing an accumulation of body fat. A child who consumes a large number of calories from fat can actually grow new fat cells. A greater number of fat cells make it much more challenging to maintain a healthy weight in later years. Extremely obese adults can have five times as many fat cells as lean adults. This is a terrible disadvantage that parents should keep from striking their children.

Obesity isn't just about the way a person looks. Although this is a big issue in our culture and low self-esteem is a very damaging infliction that can be caused by obesity, there are many health risks involved with being overweight.

The Body Mass Index (BMI) is a height-to-weight ratio used to determine who is overweight or obese. It has been widely criticized (with good reason) because it fails to distinguish between muscle weight and fat weight, so theoretically, a body builder with very little body fat would be classified as obese.

This is not common, though, and researchers still use the BMI. When height-to-weight charts are made and mortality rates are figured in, different combinations measure out different death rates. Very thin people and heavy people generally don't live as long as people of average weight. Each height-and-weight combination that is attributed to the lowest death rate is considered the “ideal weight” for that height. It's an average, and although it doesn't take body composition into account, it is still a very useful research tool.

Both the United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services consider those with a BMI of 20 or higher to be overweight and 30 or higher to be obese. The higher the BMI, the higher the death rate.

Aside from having a higher death rate (as if that weren't startling enough), overweight and obese people are much more likely to develop potentially fatal health problems including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease (the number one cause of death in the U.S.), and high LDL cholesterol levels.

Carrying excessive fat takes a toll on the body, and many of its side effects can become very serious. Damage to the back, knees and skin can occur due to friction and weighted impact, and many heavy people develop arthritis for the same reason.

Weight control is one of the great enigmas of the past century. There are countless “experts” out there, making big bucks to offer a new way of manipulating diet and exercise to make weight loss as effortless as possible. Deep down, we all know how foolish this is, but as a culture of shortcuts, it's our nature to keep looking for an easier way.

Simplicity and moderation are the two key words to most of the good things in life, and weight control is not excluded. Children with well-rounded daily lives who eat balanced meals will probably grow up to be healthier than their counterparts. That's really the bottom line. What does this mean? Here are some general guidelines that will help to keep you on the right track:

Ten ways to protect your children from obesity:

1. Don't worry about the number of calories they consume in a day – kids need a lot to accommodate their high energy levels and growing bodies. The important thing is where these calories come from.
2. No more than 30 percent of their calories should come from fat, and the less saturated fat, the better. Read labels.
3. Most of their diet should consist of complex carbohydrates. Fruit, breads and cereals are great sources. If they like whole-grain breads, by all means, give it to them!
4. Make sure that they follow a balanced diet. It's astounding how many children simply never eat vegetables because they don't like them. If your kids aren't getting the nutrients they need, ask your pediatrician to recommend supplements. A body that has to work overtime to compensate for shortages cannot metabolize fat (or perform a lot of other routine functions) properly.
5. Teach them low-fat eating habits when they're very young. For example, give them cooked peas without a slab of butter on top of them. They'll learn to like them that way.
6. Get them accustomed to skim or 1 percent milk. If you do, they won't even like whole milk, and you'll be cutting a lot of unnecessary fat out of their diet.
7. STAY AWAY FROM FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS! Even the meals that they pitch as low-fat items are high in empty calories and very low in nutrients. You're better off giving your kids Froot Loops for dinner.
8. Get them in the habit of drinking lots of water. Kids love water, once they get used to drinking it. Many times, parents who have an aversion to it don't offer water to their children, passing on a very sad legacy. Water is the most effective fat-fighter in existence, and very few of us take advantage of that.
9. An obvious one: keep them active! Even if you have to unplug the TV and computer for a week and boot them out the door, kids these days need to spend more time running around and playing.
10. More important than anything else you can do for your children, set a good example. If your health is important to you, then your kids will value their own all the more.

Kids do go through stages. Some kids go through “chubby” stages in their pre-adolescent years, and then as they begin to enter puberty, they become skinny and gangly for a while (or these events can happen in reverse, or even weirder things can happen!) Human growth is like that. As long as they're leading healthy little lifestyles that prevail into adulthood, most of them should grow up without any serious weight problems.

Of course, there are many, many uncontrollable circumstances that might cause childhood obesity, and the situation may be completely out of your hands. Genetics have been shown to play a role in body composition. Many drugs cause weight gain, too, one example being treatments containing steroids, given to children with severe asthma. These concerns should be discussed with your pediatrician, who can offer individualized advice to address such special needs.

For most parents, however, the “weight fate” of their children depends much more than they realize on habits taught at home. Although too much emphasis (or any outright emphasis at all) on body weight can be extremely damaging to youngsters, failing to teach them how to lead healthy lifestyles robs them of something of immeasurable importance.

Taking extra measures to encourage leaner living, however, even if it makes the parents look mean or strict at times, could make a powerful, lifesaving difference down the road.

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