Posted on 01/19/2003 6:45:58 AM PST by SheLion
Surge in childhood obesity stirs action in clinics, courts
Like most mothers, Noelle Punzone was happy that her preschooler was a good eater. Little Christina enjoyed her eggs, bagels and apple juice for breakfast, baloney with mayonnaise or macaroni and cheese for lunch, and generous portions of her grandmother's chicken parmigiana for dinner.
But about two years ago, when Christina was in kindergarten, Punzone became alarmed.
"Every time we went to the pediatrician, I would be surprised to see the scale went up 2 pounds here, another 5 pounds there," said Punzone, a Brooklyn mother of three girls. "During one visit, I said to my husband, 'Oh, my God, we were just here a month ago and she gained another 3 pounds.' I knew we had to do something."
Punzone's concerns were well-founded. Throughout the city and country, obesity has become a disturbing national epidemic that more frequently has its roots in childhood. According to figures cited by the Centers for Disease Control:
An estimated 60% of U.S. adults are overweight, and nearly one-third — or 59 million people — are classified as obese.
Among school-aged youth ages 6 to 19, 15% (almost 9 million) are overweight, according to 1999-2000 data, triple what it was in 1980.
n More than 10% of preschool children 2 to 5 are overweight, up from 7% in 1994.
Obesity accounts for about 300,000 deaths a year.
"As a pediatrician, I was used to taking care of healthy, thriving kids and bouncy babies," said Dr. Henry Anhalt, director of the division of pediatric endocrinology and diabetes at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where Christina attends the Kids Weight Down Program.
"We are now looking like internists, dealing with things like hypertension, high cholesterol, kids having difficulty walking and breathing," Anhalt said. "And the root of all this evil is essentially overweight."
Anhalt said his most severe cases have included a 5-year-old girl with genetic and parental problems who weighs 250 pounds, and a 12-year-old diabetic boy who weighed 360 pounds and needed gastric bypass surgery at 14 because his girth left him unable to breathe.
Of the 10,000 children Anhalt and his colleagues see each year, 30% to 40% are overweight, and approximately 15% have diabetes, he said.
"I am mortified by how unprepared we are to deal with this," said Anhalt, who, like other pediatric endocrinologists, expressed frustration that there are too few doctors in this exploding medical specialty.
"People are just in denial," he addd. "I get an E-mail every week from a pediatrician somewhere in the country telling me they have an obese child and asking me what to do. They just want to throw their hands up, saying it's a social ill."
Only in the past several months has the issue begun to penetrate the public's consciousness. The surgeon general has issued a call to action to prevent and decrease obesity. A grass-roots movement by lawyers and health advocates is also afoot — led by a Washington law professor who was successful in suing Big Tobacco 30 years ago — to hold fast-food chains such as McDonald's accountable for their role in fattening up our young.
Even Mayor Bloomberg weighed in 10 days ago, announcing that the city's Health and Hospital Corp. will launch a health and nutrition initiative targeting overweight children.
"Obesity, particularly in children, is a very serious thing," he said. "The statistics are really scary. These children tend to be obese as adults, and it really shortens your life expectancy."
There is plenty of blame to go around.
Of course, obesity is running rampant. But WHY are adults using KIDS to get their message out there!
There is a lot MORE to this story. Click on link to read the rest of the rampant rage from ADULTS!
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And the ones who are lawyers wouldn't mind some cash, like a few million, maybe.
But I do think this kind of thinking melds very nicely with the socialist dogma in which the group (state) takes over responsibility from the individual.
(Sung to the tune of 'The Hootchie Kootchie")
And that's what it's all about!
Well, the fast food chains actual role is to have made a product available. Which may not even be the culprit. Are the lawyers going to demand the product be prohibited? I guess not, I guess, as you surmise, they want to be made rich at the expense of those chains.
More home cooked meals and less fast food cop outs seem to be in order.
And none of that processed stuff from a box either.
...and we had to walk uphill both ways. :)
No! They sure don't. When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to get outside with my friends, play hop scotch, jacks, hide-in-seek. We didn't have computers, computer games, and all this TV that they have today. Your right!
I can hear my mother now: "You're not sitting in front of that TV/computer all day!"
Meek, go Here
For how I feel about you and my friends in here. 
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