For years there has been considerable concern coming from every corner of the healthcare globe about the unhealthy growth spurt happening to American kids.
Kids were getting fatter and fatter, growing out rather than up. Everything was to blame: parents, television, fast food marketers, school lunches, too many video games and no physical activity.
Experts across the land called it an obesity epidemic and glumly warned that today’s youth would be facing increased health risks as they grew older. Already there were rising numbers of kids being diagnosed with diabetes or even heart disease as a result of the extra pounds.
Finally, there was a bright spot. This week a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was released that indicated the percentage of American children considered overweight or obese had not risen since 2004.
OK, so it’s not like the genie’s been put back in the bottle. Of the 8,000 or so kids studied, 32 percent of them were overweight but not obese, 16 percent qualified as being obese and another 11 percent were considered significantly obese. That’s still a lot of overweight kids.
Hopefully, the message is starting to resonate to parents, school administrators and even the kids themselves. Hopefully, those numbers will begin to eventually come down as people begin to understand the dangers of the dilemma and change their behaviors.
Because this isn’t a problem that is just affecting people right now; it’s a problem that will have lasting effects for years to come.
--Scott Samples
Public Information Coordinator
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