Childhood Obesity

That "cute" baby fat could be putting your child at risk

Looking back at my sophomore year in college I realized the nutrition class I took as an easy elective could seriously help much of today's youth. We have a growing problem of obesity in our society and it is not only affecting older Americans, it is affecting the children as well. This rise in childhood obesity will turn into an epidemic if we don't try to prevent the problem from going any further.

In order to investigate this problem, we must look to the facts. Why are today's children exposed to this obesity epidemic. What has caused it? What will happen to our children if we do not try to prevent it? And lastly, how can we help?

The Center for Disease Control's "National Center for Health Statistics" website documents the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in 1999-2002 (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/overwght99.htm). NHANES short report, "Prevalence of Overweight Among Children and Adolescents: United States, 1999-2002," used children's weights and heights to determine the prevalence of obesity in children. The report indicated that an estimated 16 percent of children and adolescents ages 6-19 years are overweight. This probably does not seem like a big number, but in this represents a 45 percent increase from the overweight estimates of 11 percent obtained from NHANES III (1988-94).

NHANES uses a height/weight ratio to determine it's data, this is called body mass index and is expressed as weight/height2 (BMI;kg/m2). BMI's are commonly used to classify overweight and obesity among adults, and are also recommended to identify children who are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. For the NHANES study, any child with a BMI at or above the 95th percentile of the sex-specific BMI growth charts are categorized as overweight.

This rise could be attributed to how today's society lives. The Surgeon General's website "United States Department of Human and Health Services" documents some common causes of the growing problem. Children and adolescents that are overweight are generally living a sedentary lifestyle. A lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating patterns, or a combination of the two, contributes to children's weight problems. It is easy these days for television, computers, and video games to take over a chilld's life. 43% of adolescents watch more than 2 hours of television each day. These types of inactive lifestyles can condemn a child into obesity (http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/obesity/calltoaction/fact_adolescents.htm).

Now, you might be saying to yourself "So what, Why don't these kids just go outside and run around?" Well, the problem delves deeper than thatÐ'... Children suffering from obesity