I read two scary newspaper articles yesterday, one in our local paper and the other in The Wall Street Journal. Both mentioned a research study, reported by a University of North Carolina pediatrician, that showed obese kids had a high blood levels of a significant chemical marker of inflammation. What that translates into is three to five year-old American kids already having signs they are increasing their risk for early-onset heart disease. I remembered seeing a New England Journal of Medicine article from December of 2007 (NEJM, vol. 357: 2329-2337) that had first warned me of this issue. That one followed over a quarter million Danish schoolchildren and concluded that a high body-mass-index during childhood (BMI is a term that correlates weight and height) is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease as an adult.
The other study, reported on in the Associated Press article that was reprinted locally, pointed toward an increased risk of being obese in Black and Hispanic children. That is partly due to income levels, but partly also to cultural factors, according to the authors of the study. Twenty percent of these kids, all under the age of twenty, were obese, vs. fifteen percent of Caucasian kids. The NEJM article had a footnote saying an estimated 19% of US kids age 6 to 11 have a BMI greater than the 95% percentile for their age and gender.
So what's going on here and how can we change this grim picture? Number one is to let people know about this issue. Secondly we can look really hard at what we're feeding our kids from an early age on and what kind of food they eat as they get older. Thirdly we have to have a realistic look at our kids. I hear lots of young parents wanting their child to have weights high up on the growth charts; that's not the only way to measure their progress, folks. Is your kid (or grandkid) slender, chunky or just plain fat?
There are other factors in the lives of our children that we can all influence: what about our own BMI; how does that send a signal to our kids? And what about food choices? Can we start them eating the right things (mostly vegetables and fruits; less red meat). And can we, the American public, influence what the fast-food industry offers to their customers and to the kids in particular? Is there a way to get young people interested in more exercising and less sitting in front of their computers, TVs and all those hand-held devices?
I've heard people speculate that the Boomer generation may be the first to live average shorter lifespans than their parents. I don't know the data here, but these are adults who presumably are fully competent to make their own choices. That's not true of our kids. it's time we turn this slide into obesity around for their sakes.
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