Childhood obesity now threatens one in three kids with long term health problems, and the crisis is growing. Happy Jack Hovis was just a month old when he came to live with his aunt Terry Hunter in
As he grew, the bright eyed boy rarely fussed about his food. He loved fried chicken and green beans cooked in fatback, and he really loved eating at McDonald's. By the age of 4, he was so rotund that his pediatrician referred him to a heart specialist and, later, to a hospital-based weight clinic. Happy Jack is now 6, and following a program that combines regular exercise with smaller servings of lighter foods. The regimen is working he has maintained roughly the same weight for 10 months, two inches taller. But at 118 pounds, he still weighs nearly twice what is normal for his age and height. For this child, slimming down isn't an aesthetic issue. His health even his life may depend on it.
Children's impulses haven't changed much in recent decades. But social forces from the demise of home cooking to the rise of fast food and video technology-have converged to make them heavier. Snack and soda companies are spending hundreds of millions a year to promote empty calories, while schools cut back on physical education and outdoor play is supplanted by Nintendo and the Internet. The consequences are getting serious. By the government's estimate, some 6 million American children are now fat enough to endanger their health. An additional 5 million are on the threshold, and the problem is growing more extreme even as it becomes more widespread. The children we see today are 30 percent heavier than the ones who were referred to us in 1990, says Dr. Naomi Neufeld, a pediatric endocrinologist in
Obese kids suffer both physically and emotionally throughout childhood, and those who remain heavy as adolescents tend to stay that way into adulthood. The resulting illnesses diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, several cancers now claim an estimated half-million American lives each year, while costing us $100 billion in medical expenses and lost productivity. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Click-man predicts that obesity will soon rival smoking as a cause of preventable death, and some health experts are calling for national action to combat it. Meanwhile, the challenge for children, and their parents, is to swim against the current.
Until recently, childhood obesity was so rare that no one tracked it closely. Body-mass index (BMI), the height-to-weight ratio used to measure adult heft, seemed irrelevant to people whose bodies are still growing. But that mind-set is changing. In a gesture aimed at parents and pediatricians, federal health officials recently published new growth charts that extend the BMI system to children. Unlike the adult charts, which classify anyone with a BMI of 25 or higher as overweight and anyone with a BMI of 30 or more as obese, the childhood charts (following page) use population norms from the 1960s to determine healthy weight ranges for kids 2 to 20.
According to the new charts, a typical 7-year-old girl stands 4 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 50 pounds, giving her a BMI of 15. By the age of 17, she stands 5 feet 4 and weighs 125 pounds, for a BMI of 21. To spare parents undue alarm over baby fat or the normal weight gain that precedes growth spurts, the new charts use a broad definition of healthy weight. To be at risk of becoming too heavy, a child must fall above what was the 85th percentile during the 1960s (145 pounds for that 5-foot-4-inch girl). Only after hitting what was the 95th percentile (170 pounds for the same girl) does one become overweight.
Event by these silent standards, the proportion of kids who are overweight jumped from 5 percent in 1964 to nearly 13 percent in 1994, the most recent year on record. If the trend has continued and many experts believe it has accelerated one child in three is now either overweight or at risk of becoming so. No race or class has been spared, and many youngsters are already suffering health consequences. Dr. Nancy Krebs, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado, notes that overweight children are now showing up with such problems as fatty liver, a precursor to cirrhosis, and obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which the excess flesh around the throat blocks the airway, causing loud snoring, fit fill sleep and a chronic lack of oxygen that can damage the heart and lungs.
Even type 2 diabetes known traditionally as adult onset diabetes is turning up in overweight kids. Ten years ago I would have told you that type 2 diabetes doesn't occur until after 40, says Dr. Robin Goland of
Even if they don't develop diabetes, chronically overweight kids may become prime candidates for heart attacks and strokes. In a recent survey of preschoolers at New York City Head Start Centers, Dr. Christine Williams of
How does a child end up in this predicament? Genes are clearly part of the story. Nine year old Emily Hoffman of Humble,
These are common temptations. Many schools now feature not only soda and snack machines but on-site outlets for fast-food chains. At the same time, recess and physical education are vanishing from the schools' standard curriculum.
No one expects these trends to reverse any time soon. Cynics predict that we'll get serious about childhood obesity about 20 years from now, when today's youngsters Moving on, Kate Harned used to hate exercise, but when Mom took it up, she did, too, and slimmed down are hobbled by arteriosclerosis and end-stage renal disease. But nutrition experts are so worried that some now advocate cigarette style taxes on snack foods and soft drinks. Writing in the current American Journal of Public Health, activist Michael Jacobson and Yale psychologist Kelly Brownell note that a national one-cent tax on soda pop could generate $1.5 billion a year to promote healthful alternatives. (The soft-drink industry is understandably opposed.) Meanwhile, researchers are studying the effects of positive incentives to eat better. In one recent experiment, a team at the
Protecting our kids may ultimately require such initiatives, but we don't have to wait for the world to change. Dr. Thomas Robinson, a Stanford pediatrician, has shown that simply limiting TV time can help immunize them against obesity. In a study involving 192 third and fourth graders, he found that those who held their screen time to one hour a day were measurably leaner after nine months than those who watched the tube at will.
Setting limits is important, but parents can often accomplish more by setting an example. When Kate Harned of
It does not really bother Janelle Marino, 10, that she packs 140 pounds onto her 4 foot 2 inch frame. True, she has difficulty catching her breath when she climbs stairs, and her eyes once welled up when she didn't look as sleek in her dance costume as her slimmer sister did. Still, my friends are very nice to me, says the soft-spoken little girl, who lives in
For Janelle, like so many other overweight children, it isn't the extra pounds themselves but her parents' reaction to the extra pounds that takes the greatest emotional toll. As a result, families with an overweight child face a delicate balancing act: how do you save a child's health without breaking her heart? Telling a child that she needs to lose weight or attend a camp for husky children risks imparting the message that the people whom she trusts to love her unconditionally, dimpled knees and all, and to take her side against the pint-size sadists calling her bubble butt (as one boy labels his obese sister), have turned against her. The repercussions of that can go far beyond crushed feelings.
There is a danger that the child's obesity will be compounded by depression, anxiety or a life-threatening eating disorder. Pressure to lose weight can make a child feel that he, not his weight, is being criticized, says psychologist Michael Lowe of
Families with an overweight child face three questions, whether, when and how to intercede. The first guideline is not to worry about baby fat. Only 20 percent of overweight 4- and 5-year-olds will become overweight adults, notes pediatrician Nancy Krebs of the
That's why parents of an obese teen can't afford complacency. An obese adolescent has a greater than 75 percent chance of being an obese adult, says Krebs. Degree of obesity matters, too. Is the child twice her desired weight? Or does she have only a little roll of belly fat? Boys and girls both bulk up around puberty, with girls adding more of the weight as fat and boys adding it as muscle; seeing your teenage girl get a little soft around the middle seldom requires intervention if she is eating healthy food and staying active. Finally, a child's horizontal expansion may outpace her vertical increase before a growth spurt. Kids will gain 30 or 40 pounds and then grow 10 or 11 inches several times. The pounds typically precede the inches.
It's important for parents not to regard a plump child as a blight on their own image. So often I see judgmental parents who feel they've failed if their child is overweight, says Beth Braun, in house psychologist at Kid Shape, a Los Angeles-based program. Parents need to focus not on themselves but on the child. In assessing whether to intervene, a more important factor than weight itself is the child's eating and activity patterns. A child can get pudgy but still be eating healthy, showing self control and being active, says Lowe. "In this case you are likely dealing with a biological predisposition to overweight, and the extra pounds are less likely to pose a health risk. If a teen is 40 pounds overweight, he may be able to lose 20 of those pounds, "but the idea that he can reach and stay at an ideal weight might require a lifestyle change that is simply not worth the health gain you would achieve, and that might even trigger eating disorders, says Lowe.
If a child's body mass index, eating and activity patterns all spell trouble, ferret out emotional contributors to weight gain first. Teens, even more than younger children, are at risk of substituting cookies for companionship. If they're lonely, then food is their friend, says KidShape's Braun. If they come home to an empty house, food keeps them company. Parents should always look beyond the weight itself: Is it a warning sign? Is the child depressed? If the answer is yes, then address the cause, not the symptom.
But Sean's weight ballooned when he moved with his mother to a new house in the
The worst thing a parent can do is restrict food, says Janet Laubgross, a clinical psychologist in
Focus on health, not appearance, and more activity, not less food. The kids know they're fat, says psychology professor Joan Chrisler of
Preadolescent girls require special handling. It is so important to help the child through this problem by giving them unconditional love, says KidShape's Braun. You have to say I love you no matter what a lot. If parents approach the problem in a judgmental way, she says, they risk tipping a girl into depression and an eating disorder. One reason is that over the last century, girls' source of self-esteem has shifted from die quality of their character to the shape of their bodies, finds historian Joan Brumberg of
When Samantha Ginsburg of
A child who feels loved, not judged, is more likely to accept a parent's message about the need to lose weight. Being overweight in a Slim-Fast culture is devastating enough for sensitive children. Overweight children are often the last ones picked for a schoolyard team, the ones whom teachers and others adults tend to judge by the size of their waist before the content of their mind and heart. The one thing they don't need is to be called fat by the people who are supposed to love them most.
Fat Is a Borderless Issue
Amercan KIds are hardly the only ones getting fatter, According to a recent report by the International Obesity Task Force, childhood obesity is rising all over the world. In industrialized countries, about one in 10 school children is considered obese. The problem is growing in the developing world, too. In
Some of the world's huskiest kids and adults live in
As in
But
Tired of watching their progeny put on the pounds, parents are eager for a quick fix. Low-fat foods and diet drugs are ubiquitous. Kids from