"She's fat. Bush's fault."
Posted on 05/18/2008 1:13:55 PM PDT by neverdem
An epidemic of obesity is compromising the lives of millions of American children, with burgeoning problems that reveal how much more vulnerable young bodies are to the toxic effects of fat.
In ways only beginning to be understood, being overweight at a young age appears to be far more destructive to well-being than adding excess pounds later in life. Virtually every major organ is at risk. The greater damage is probably irreversible.
Doctors are seeing confirmation of this daily: boys and girls in elementary school suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of type 2 diabetes, once a rarity in pediatricians' offices; even a spike in child gallstones, also once a singularly adult affliction. Minority youth are most severely affected, because so many are pushing the scales into the most dangerous territory.
With one in three children in this country overweight or worse, the future health and productivity of an entire generation -- and a nation -- could be in jeopardy.
"There's a huge burden of disease that we can anticipate from the growing obesity in kids," said William H. Dietz, director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is a wave that is just moving through the population."
The trouble is a quarter-century of unprecedented growth in girth. Although the rest of the nation is much heavier, too, among those ages 6 to 19 the rate of obesity has not just...
--snip--
Ludwig compares the situation to global warming.
"We don't have all the data yet, but by the time all the data comes in it's going to be too late," he said. "You don't want to see the water rising on the Potomac before deciding global warming is a problem."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I can't find part 2. Maybe it comes on Monday?
Minority youth are most severely affected, because so many are pushing the scales into the most dangerous territory.
So obesity in children is not only a problem, it’s a racial/ethnic problem too. Okay...................
And there’s got to be a way to bash Bush for this. Have food stamp benefits been cut while Bush has been pres.? Or not kept up with inflation? That would fit the news media template of poor people not being able to get the most nutritious food, that they have to get high fat high sugar junk food for their kids.
See, it’s all because of Republicans. Elect a good Democrat such as Obama, and these problems will disappear.
I doubt the taste of their own medicine will be 99% fat free.
"She's fat. Bush's fault."
Ahem.
Yes, it is a... well, it isn’t a racial issue. It is a choice issue and a lack of education issue.
There are plenty of studies that show that wealthy and educated folks, on average, eat better.
It isn’t simply a matter of them being able to afford better food, though. It is that they choose to eat better. Because they are educated. Which is probably why they are wealthy.
You can eat well (healthily) on very little money, but that too, requires smarts and ingenuity.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that people who tend to make the bad life decisions that leave them poor are also people who make bad food choices. They also make bad education choices, bad economic choices, and bad choices when it comes to parenting.
But it has absolutely nothing to do with race.
I would imagine that there are many poor people who eat good diets. If you could single them out, you would probably find that those are the ones who will not be poor for long.
You can’t fix stupid, as they say.
Stupid is an equal opportunity sort of thing.
I’d like to see the water rising on the Potomac. I’d like that very much.
Mostly the poor and minorities.
So. Which is it? Is there an obesity crisis (I believe there is) or are American kids going to bed every night starving?
A friend of mine chaperoned a zoo trip for middle school students a few weeks ago and was stunned at how many didn’t even have the stamina to walk around for more than ten minutes.
Within the last year or so we discussed dietary habits of Hispanic kids in South Texas. They were offered good nutritious food in schools along with education about nutrition, but not a single one of them would eat anything but their traditional high carb, high fat diets — and several times more food than their not-fat ancestors ate. Disgusting. They did’t care what they look like or how sick they get.
There are some interesting treatments for obesity in development, but importantly, there are lots of people who, for philosophical reasons, don’t want such remedies available.
Much like the MMGW crowd, they are emotionally invested in the idea that the *only* way to be healthy is to eat health food, however they define it, and to overexercise.
They will fight any other lifestyle that might achieve even better results, because it is different from the one they believe in.
And while they have any number of kooky ideas, for the most part they agree on one thing: pleasure is bad, and must be avoided, unless it has concomitant pain.
That’s what I was thinking!
Where’s my foot-long chili cheeseburger sub ?
I’m halfway with you. My B-I-L has a PhD in a health care field and admits to 525. Heaven only knows what he really weighs. Plenty of education, clearly knows better but continues to make poor food choices.
And his college age son who always wanted to be like dad is well on his way.
Have I mentioned that they blame it on doctors?
Weren’t no government-subsidized, fat-fortified, processed food in the Depression, either. My grandmother and her sisters grew vegetables and canned them, raised chickens and ate them, fed garbage to hogs and made sausage ... and all without air conditioning.
I have to admit that my grandmother thought I was totally useless :-). “What do you mean you never plucked a chicken?” “We’re not allowed to have poultry in our subdivision, Grandma!”
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Did they understand what high fat diet would cause problems in long run
Better YET do you know in my city Los Angeles they introduce new commeircal encourage parents to low fat recipes
IN SPANISH on English speaking networks
What if you could have your foot-long chili cheeseburger sub, not gain weight, and improve muscle tone with just a pill?
Would you prefer to sit down to a nice crunchy bowl of tofu chunks with bean sprouts and lawn clippings, hold the earwigs?
Digestion is an elaborate process, and you could live quite well on an atrocious diet, without harm, if you just digested what you needed, and nothing more. As long as you at least had minimal nutrition, it really wouldn’t matter.
However, that tofu is bad stuff, because it also contains a huge amount of plant estrogen, a tiny amount of which can mess you up, and which is very hard to screen out. So it might actually be worse for you than the sub.
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