Sept 05

Generation F
Childhood obesity has become a crisis that threatens to create millions of unhealthy future adults. Here's what can be done to ensure a generation of kids is fit and not fat.

By Patrick Dougherty

    In early May 2005, former President Bill Clinton and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee took the stage at a Harlem school to announce that they had become soldiers in the battle against what may be our nation’s most ominous health crisis: childhood obesity. Along with the American Heart Association, Clinton and Huckabee are spearheading an initiative to combat this latest health epidemic by uniting the efforts of food manufacturers, the media, community groups and schools to promote healthy eating and active lifestyles.
    While Clinton and Huckabee discussed their own weight management struggles and ultimate victories (Huckabee shed 110 pounds and detailed his story in Quit Digging Your Grave With A Knife and Fork [Center Street]), they also cautioned that childhood obesity is a complex problem that can only be overcome through a sustained, dedicated effort.
    “Too many people believe that the problem is simple and singular and that the solution is also simple and singular,” Huckabee recently told Energy Times. “But you can’t really address the obesity crisis until you are really honest and look at the whole universe of things that have culminated in the perfect storm.”
    This storm of childhood obesity has been brewing for decades. Swirling at its epicenter are the myriad causes of obesity in kids: non-nutritious diets (i.e., fast food, snacks), sedentary activities (internet marathons, video games and television) and confusing media messages.
    The average American family has set its ship on a course aimed directly for the storm’s churning heart. Staying the course will mean disaster. But America’s parents have the power to steer towards a new course—for the calm, stable waters of healthy weight management.

Weighty Statistics
    The numbers confirm what we can see ourselves near any schoolhouse. According to the American Obesity Association, about 15.5% of adolescents (ages 12 to 19) and 15.3% of children (ages 6 to 11) are obese. Over the past 25 years, obesity rates have tripled in adolescents and doubled in children. Studies show that 70% of obese adolescents grow up to be obese adults and are at extreme risk for developing heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, some forms of cancer and other ailments. Early obesity carries psychological complications as well, including depression, anxiety and poor socialization skills.
    This will all have a huge impact on public health down the road. Primarily due to the children’s obesity epidemic, today’s youth is projected to be the first American generation ever with a shorter life expectancy than that of its parents. Unless society acts soon, we’ll be referring to this group of American kids as Generation F—for fat. Childhood obesity’s staggering complexity can seem paralyzing. With so many contributing factors, what should we attack first?
    “The single greatest issue is probably inactivity,” Huckabee asserts. “Caloric intake of adolescents is not substantially different from what it was a few years ago, but the activity level is substantially different.”
    A study conducted by the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill agrees, showing that in adolescents, caloric intake increased slightly (+1%) and physical activity dropped significantly (-13%) between 1980 and 2000.

Storm Screens
    Watching television, playing video games or sitting in front of a computer—children’s “screen time”—has become dangerously excessive. Much like the obesity crisis as a whole, screen time is a far more insidious threat than it may appear. A 1999 study found that the average screen time among 2- to 17-year-olds was nearly 4.5 hours per day; more recent studies report average screen time in excess of six hours per day. Not surprisingly, children who watch over three hours of television a day have been shown to be 50% more likely to be obese than kids who watch for under two hours. Perhaps most troubling, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 22.6% of children ages 9 to 13 do not participate in any free-time physical activity. Why are children, traditionally known for almost constant motion, content to sit around and do nothing?
    Part of the answer may lie in the types of foods America’s underactive children are eating. Examination of overweight children’s diets reveals a shocking dearth of nutrition. Caloric intake may not have changed much over the past 20 years, but the types of calories children consume has changed for the worse, with a heavy emphasis on nutritionally deficient processed foods and sugars. A recent study by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) found that approximately one third of the total daily calories eaten by kids in the study came from desserts, snack foods and pizza.
    A diet dominated by simple carbohydrates sets in motion a perpetual cycle of blood sugar spikes and crashes. The result? Consistently low energy levels and frequent food cravings, punctuated by brief spurts of energy gained from high-calorie, high-sugar, nutrient-deficient foods.
    This type of eating can make children so sluggish that sedentary screen time may be all they wish to pursue. So eating a Double Whopper is a double whammy—the child is not only getting a calorie-laden, non-nutritious meal, he or she is also sapped of the energy needed to burn the calories off.
    As fatigue relegates children to couch potatohood, they are bombarded with persuasive commercials that glamorize these energy-sapping, nutritionally deficient foods. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, the number of television commercials viewed by children has doubled since the 1970s, with the majority of those advertisements promoting junk food, candy and sugary cereals.

Responsible Parenting at Home
    Ultimately, it is parents who can steer children away from the churning obesity storm; they can control the elements and set examples that help their children make healthy nutrition and activity choices when they’re on their own.
    To Brian Wansink, author of Marketing Nutrition (University of Illinois Press) and Professor of Applied Economics of Marketing and of Nutritional Science at Cornell University, parents are “nutritional gatekeepers,” responsible for ensuring a healthy household diet. “A household’s nutritional gatekeepers make 71% of a child’s food choices; those preparing the food in the household account for the bulk of a child’s caloric intake,” observes Wansink. “Parents must realize that they have a much bigger influence over their children’s nutritional intake and eating habits than they think.”
    Purchasing and preparing nutritious foods is only half the battle. Kids have to eat these healthy foods, many of which have a time-honored reputation for being “yucky.” But with proper planning and preparation, even green vegetables can be made appealing to a finicky kid.
    “The more children are exposed to certain foods, the more they will grow to like those foods,” Wansink says. “Appreciation for certain foods develops as we age; other foods we appreciate inherently.” The challenge lies in helping children enjoy healthy foods.
    Adults have long used classic bribery and guilt techniques to entice kids into eating foods they dislike: “Don’t you want to be a member of the clean plate club?” “Finish your broccoli or you get no dessert!” Wansink says such techniques are counterproductive. “Commanding children to clean their plates or rewarding them for finishing vegetables is the wrong strategy. Instead, ask children to ‘just take a taste’ of vegetables or other healthy foods every time they are served. This helps to build an adaptive preference, so children will begin to like these vegetables and eat them willingly.”

Making Fitness a Family Affair
    Eating healthy foods begins to break the cycle of sugar highs and crashes, and help restore children’s energy levels. But kids also have to get active, and the best way for parents to encourage activity is to exercise alongside their children. “I’ve often said that good health behavior is more caught then taught,” Huckabee says. “When parents live differently and model different behavior, then we start making some progress.”
    Parents who exercise and eat nutritious, energizing foods together with their children promote weight management while enjoying precious family moments of good health. And it’s fun! Sharing long walks with a child may open communication channels with even the most tight-lipped teenager—fostering closeness while burning calories. During the friendly competition of a family doubles tennis match, parents can teach their children strategy, teamwork and sportsmanship as the pounds melt away. Parents can also strengthen a community’s resolve to fight children’s obesity by organizing neighborhood team sports activities, anything that will make it fun for kids to get away from those screens.
    Chubby kids, once the scattered subjects of schoolmates’ jokes, may soon outnumber their tormentors. But any poetic justice in this shift is overshadowed by the health consequences obese children face. Adults need to set a positive example and work alongside our children towards good health. The child obesity epidemic may continue to rage, but pursuing healthy lifestyles together as families will provide us with shelter from the storm.

Back To Top