Parent Talk / March 2006
Young and Fat
This summer, thousands of over-sized kids will attend summer “fat camps” in hopes of losing weight, exercising, learning about nutrition and eating meals with portions that many would consider a light snack.
It’s part of a reaction to a crisis both perceived and real. Young people are feeling the national pressure to look trim and fit. But it’s not just body-image issues that drive the trend. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. And obesity, the CDC says, is clearly tied to numerous health problems such as hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and many others. The problem doesn’t just stop with overweight children. Lifelong eating habits are established in childhood according to the CDC. The result is that the U.S. is in a population-wide obesity crisis.
The experts are at odds with each other over some aspects of weight control. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture released their new food pyramid in April, many critics cheered that, at last, better guidance was being given to consumers on making healthy food choices. Yet although the new pyramid makes more recommendations about quantities of food, exercise, and allows for individual differences, it has also been criticized as insufficient.
Despite debate about specific guidelines for nutrition, most agree, losing weight is primarily about nutrition and adequate exercise. For children specifically, however, “the most successful obesity treatments involve the cooperation of the entire family,” says the director of the division of pediatric endocrinology and diabetes at the Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey. “It involves a total lifestyle change.”
Although the approach to weight control is multi-faceted, according to the clinic experts, “obesity is a matter of nutrition, not willpower.” Their published research reports that obese children lack important nutrients like vitamins D, E, B-12, and Folic acid, among others, compared to regular-weight children.
The findings have raised concerns about not only the health of obese children but also their ability to lose weight. A child that is not healthy, one that is not fully energetic and vital, may not be able to exercise sufficiently to burn calories.
Overweight children may need more than smaller food portions. They may require specific nutritional intervention.
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