Ancedotal observation. One thing that really stood out when I moved back to the US after 25 years in Asia is the number of obese people there are. And, something I really notice now that I have 3 kids, the number of obese kids there are. It’s a LOT of kids that stand out here in America.
Yes, it is real. It isn’t that hard to understand either. These things build up over time. It really is just an energy in versus energy out equation. Kids don’t need to be force fed candy bars and chips to put on the few extra pounds it takes to make them overweight. There is simply too much food readily available and that builds over time. Eating as recreation or as a social activity will catch up with you slowly but surely. Look at sodas alone. They used to be a six ounce treat when my grandparents were young then a 12 ounce can daily became the norm and now it is 20 ounces or beyond. The human digestion tract isn’t a black hole and will try to do something with that energy even if it has to store it for future famine (it is really thinking, something big is about to happen or my master wouldn’t be doing this). If you do that for years on end, your body will convert that into semi-permanent fat storage. It isn’t just sodas though because there is no one cause. Fast food meals have been supersized along with regular meals because norms have shifted.
If you don’t think it is real, look at class yearbooks decade by decade for the past 40 years and see if you don’t change your mind.
Pediatrician checking in. Some very good comments made already. Yes it is very real. And yes primary prevention of obesity is KEY.
Some under-reported good news (I hope on this side of the wall):
This in 2010 after years of increase. Still way above historic baselines but a sign that some of these nation-wide policy changes and increased parental awareness are beginning to make a difference.
I visited my rather wealthy brother and his family some years ago. They raised three healthy but skeletal children, and this was partly genetics, but my sister in law served ‘healthy’ food at meals. Lunch: egg salad on a pita bread, fruit, milk or iced tea (no sugar). Dinner: one modest chicken breast or pork shop, broccoli, rice pilaf (home made), an ice cream sandwich or popsicle for dessert… They didn’t keep sacks of chips or soda in the house! And they kept all three kids busy from morning till evening every single day with sports and activities, not much time for lolling around playing video games (or getting into trouble after school in the empty house). The kids put on a little weight as they aged into their 20’s, but are still quite thin, comparatively speaking.
How accurate is this? I do know that simple sugars and carbohydrates are supposed to make you feel hungrier, and that you don’t need to eat as much nutrient-dense food to get your required intake and that 1000 calories worth of brown rice, etc. will have greater volume than 1000 calories worth of junk. That said, if you only consume 1000 calories and your body needs 1500, you should loose weight over time (although you might experience scurvy).
I live in Chicago and I walk a lot and pass two high schools and I see A LOT of fat kids. I think back to when I was in school and there were only about five kids I can think of that I would say were WAY overweight. Then I look at these kids.
What amazes me is how a bunch of them will wait to get on the bus at Addison and get off at Belmont. That is FOUR BLOCKS. You can’t walk four blocks? Not that walking four blocks would take the weight off but it tells you something about attitude.
I am sure most of it is more access to food. When I was a kid, there was a McDonalds, but only one and you had to go out of your way to get there. Now everywhere I go there is a McDonalds or other fast food. So it’s easier to stop in and grab a bite than make something.
And I’m not saying McDonalds is at fault. No one forces you to eat there and calories are calories, but it’s fast food places make it easy to endulge yourself.
There’s hype involved, but I don’t know whether it’s mostly hype or not.
Children in this country are over-nourished, get an excess of medical care, and are physically larger as a result (and maybe because of gene selection). So some of the numbers are thrown off by generally larger kids compared to the smaller ones of times past (larger for their age, skeletally and muscularly, not just fat). In addition, comparisons of things like cholesterol levels are comparing a broad modern sample to a sparse uncontrolled sample in the past.
But IMHO, kids just aren’t as active as I was way back when. I used to wake up and get outside as soon as I could. Then I would run, climb trees, throw rocks, hit logs with sticks, build tree forts, try to dam up the creek, and there was almost always some kind of pick-up game going on. Almost everywhere I went, I walked or rode my bike, and that bike had one gear and weighed a ton.
TP BMI is not reflective of being overall larger if that means height and weight both: it is heavier for the height. And there is NO indication that kids today are more muscularly or skeletally dense than kids were in the 60’s. No are the norms for “things like cholesterol” based on past “sparse uncontrolled” samples.
Indeed there is much less activity as part of the daily living of childhood.
**DSeid **- I didn’t mention BMI or density. Kids are increasing in height, as shown in this study covering 1960-2002, and that means they have bigger skeletons and more muscle. That also means comparisons of BMIs for kids of the same age across that time period are not valid. As for cholesterol tests, they were very rare in children 20 years ago, and there was no means of evaluating the results because there was no historical data to work with. Now, there is widespread testing of children across a large enough sample to determine meaningful statistics. Comparing current figures to those old ones is meaningless.
I don’t argue in general that kids weigh too much now, but that there are elements of hype involved. And apples to oranges comparisons, or even comparisons of different types of apples are a common means of hyping.
I do think our perception of ‘thin’ has changed. I was a fat kid at school. Now, when I look at my school photos, I don’t really look that fat by today’s standards, in fact I just look average-size. So what you’re seeing as thin kids in the schoolyard is probably quite different to thin kids in the schoolyard 30 years ago.
Obesity and overweight in childhood are defined by percentiles of BMI based on historic BMI percentile norms. In recent years roughly 20% of kids have the BMI as heavy for height (actually height squared) that only 5% of kids used to weigh for height (not age) historically. The marginal increase in height averages over that period of time has nothing to do with these changing BMI percentiles.
Awareness of increasing rates of Type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol among obese children did not follow increased screening. Increased screening occurred because more diabetes was being found. The previous norms were statistically valid norms for the populations by age.
BMI is not a perfect tool for determining fatness and a focus on weight alone is less effective in my opinion than a focus on lifestyle choices of which weight (actually BMI) is a marker. But the issue is not being overhyped and it is indeed apples to apples, same variety. Systematic changes to children’s environments are needed.
My favorite set of slides on this topic (not for their implications, but for their impact) is this set of slides from the CDC depicting changes in the prevalence of adult obesity by state. It’s stunning, and it shows obesity spreading like an epidemic in waves. Again, the slides are specific to adults, but I see no reason to suspect that similar trends would be seen among children and adolescents.
I’d like to hear more about this “excess of medical care.”
Vaccinations, perhaps?
This is what pisses me off. If there is a need for a subsidized market in America, it’s healthy foods.
Healthy food should be the cheapest thing going and the other processed shit needs to be taxed and then taxed again as a luxury item.
The problem isn’t that healthy food is so expensive: few people are so poor that they can’t afford rice, beans, and frozen vegetables. The problem is that cheap healthy food is boring. I can totally understand that if you have to say no to everything your kids want: no to toys, no to piano lessons, no to vacations, no to clubs, no to clothes, no to school field trips, no to movies . . .I can see how it might be pretty damn tempting to say yes to Swiss Cake Rolls.
There is better tasting healthy food, but it does cost a lot more: fresh fruits and veggies, the better cuts of meat, spices and seasonings.
I agree, I was over-generalizing.
And often requires effort. Who’ll submit to the drudgery of soaking and boiling beans and loading them down with salt, when near-instant gratification is only a freshly-ripped bag of Combos or nuked Hot Pocket away?
No not vaccinations or any other CT. Overuse of antibiotics, asthma medications, ritalin and other ADD treatments, the list goes on. These are in many cases good things, but will result in children growing larger. In other cases they may contribute to children becoming overweight by affecting their metabolism, even indirectly.
Now we are just quibbling over definitions. But at no time did I mention over-hyping. A story that is covered in newsertainment involves hype.
That’s pretty freaking scary. 
Especially the part about Hispanics (for me anyway). I can definitely see that my own family (myself included) are almost the norm…and every one of us is overweight but 10 to 15 lbs.
-XT