kids are diebetic and obese?..I wonder why

[backwoodsbob]

There is no mystery about why so many kids are obese and sick these days....they don't ever exercise.

I am trapped behind a schoolbus usually about twice a week coming home from work and what I see are fat kids being pampered by their equally fat parents.Sorry but that's how it is.

I see kids who live 100 yards from the road who can't walk to the house...their parents have to pick them up.Even then they act like walking 50 feet to the car is some sort of torture
I see massively overweight kids who get picked up by their parents who are seen reaching for the food and pop before the car even pulls out.

WE are to blame for our kids being fat

[Iris]

1. And what about all the scheduled activities?

Soccer games where, after an hour of play, all the kids have to have a gatorade and some kind of snack.

[backwoodsbob]

3. what about going outside and playing?

what we all did until twenty or so years ago?

Think about it...this obesity epidemic directly corrolates to the video game revolution and parents parking their children in front of cable tv

[lunasun]

5. Also the all about fear parents who watch cable and will not let their kids out to play

Because of all the bad things they imagine from what they see sensationalized on TV.

This is not about areas with real high gang activity,crime, which do have problems with parks and playgrounds and may not be safe

[Warpy]

6. Parents watch too many cop shows

which is why a 9 year old can no longer play in a park unless Mom is helicoptering around.

[AngryOldDem]

7. I think partly it goes back to how times have changed.

When I was growing up, neighborhoods were vital places where everyone knew everyone else. Kids played outside from practically dawn to dusk with no fear.

Now, it's rare to find a stay-at-home parent, and rarer that people know who their neighbors are. When I take the dog out on a typical summer afternoon, the area around my house is a ghost town. Contrast that to when I grew up. The only time you see groups of kids, it's at soccer practice. As a result of many factors, we have become insular as a society, and that has spread to our kids.

I grew up during the time of true community, and I'm sad my kids never really knew that kind of world.

Not offering an excuse (hell, I have a son who I'd like to see be more active) but one of many possible explanations, especially to your question.

[yeoman6987]

8. Both the Duggar and duck Dynasty families

Don't have any obese children.


Sorry couldn't resist....I tried.

[AngryOldDem]

15. I guess that's one solution...

...having the equivalent of an elementary school population for a family. But sorry, not for me.

[yeoman6987]

20. So true

[joeglow3]

29. Amen. We moved two years ago to the neighborhood our kid's school is in and love it

Three days last week, my 11 year old was at the park for 3-4 hours playing football with 25+ of his classmates. Don't see that too often anymore.

[AngryOldDem]

44. And it's sad.

At the risk of sounding like an old geezer, times *have* changed, and not necessarily for the better. When I compare my childhood to that of kids' today, they are missing out on a lot of simple, neat stuff just because the pace of life has changed.

[joeglow3]

45. It is one of the reasons we send our kids to the Catholic school we do

The neighborhood we live in is 55+ years old, but the church and school keep the neighborhood going. We just had an VP at a Fortune 500 company sell their $500k house to buy a $250k in the neighborhood. My wife and I love because it is like when we were younger - we cannot go for a walk without stopping half a dozen times to talk with people. I have little to no concern with my 8 and 11 year olds just getting on their bike and riding because people know everyone and look out for them.

This is something we did NOT have in our prior neighborhood.

[liberal_at_heart]

46. I don't mean to be a downer but being in a nice neighborhood can be deceiving.

My family and I lived in a very nice, upscale, suburban neighborhood a couple of years ago. There were still abduction attempts. Now we live in a small rural neighborhood and there was actually a kidnapping a couple of months ago. Yes, I know some people on DU would call me paranoid and overprotective, but I don't care. I'm not taking that chance. When my children want exercise they join a school sport. My daughter is in weight lifting at college, and does yoga at home on a regular basis. My son takes PE in high school pretty regularly. This year he is taking Health during the first semester and PE during the second semester, and I have no doubt he will sign up for PE next year as well because he really does like PE class. He was also in wrestling a couple of years ago, and he also likes yoga although he doesn't do it as regularly as his sister does.

[yeoman6987]

52. Thanks for the reminder!

Times certainly have changed in all economic residences.

[Thav]

21. There is also a hyper-protectionism of children

Police and the DHS may harass you for "neglecting" your child by not being attached to their hip 100% of the time.

But, I agree, let them play outside as much as possible like when we were kids. In the summer, I only came home during summer break when I needed food or water. Otherwise I was out running around the woods behind my house with my friends.

[phil89]

30. Calorie intake is the issue

you can exercise all day but undo that with 20 minutes of eating.

[hedgehog]

41. As someone working very hard to lose weight, I agree

Paying attention to what you eat and how much you eat is the key to weight control. Exercise is how you keep fit and able to do things.

[HuckleB]

2. Obesity Rate for Young Children Plummets 43% in a Decade

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/health/obesity-rate-for-young-children-plummets-43-in-a-decade.html

[backwoodsbob]

4. then all the screeds about childhood obesity and diabetes are over

sweet

[Brickbat]

9. Nope, sorry -- the OP saw fat kids on a bus. That never happened when he was little.

You and your research. Feh.

[HuckleB]

14. +1

[Luminous Animal]

10. ....

He credited those habits, and changes in the federally funded Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, for the decline in obesity among young children. The program, which subsidizes food for low-income women, reduced funding for fruit juices, cheese and eggs and increased it for whole fruits and vegetables.

[KurtNYC]

23. that headline was immediately debunked

Actually, the JAMA paper reported the result in 2-5 year-old children as one result in an overall picture which showed no change in obesity either in children and adolescents or in adults over the 10-year period.
...
Let’s look at the data that gave rise to the dramatic finding. The third line down shows the results for the group in question. For the 5 intervals for which data are presented, the prevalence of obesity in the 2-5 years age-group was: 13.9, 10.7, 10.1, 12.1, and 8.4 percent. Notice that the trend was decreasing over the first 3 intervals but went up in the 4th interval before going down in the fifth.

If one calculates the percent decline from 2003-2004 to 2009-2010 – rather than for the period 2003-2004 to 2011-2012 – one obtains a much less impressive 14 percent rather than 43 percent. In fact, researchers who use survey data like those presented in the JAMA paper are well aware that there are chance fluctuations in such data, and they are generally wary of seizing on short-term changes within subgroups.
...
So, if the authors didn’t highlight the 43 percent in their published paper, how did it get catapulted into front-page news? By that indispensable instrument of modern science – the press release.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2014/02/27/how-credible-is-cdcs-43-percent-decline-in-obesity-in-young-children/

[HuckleB]

25. That was one critique.

That doesn't mean the critique was worthy. If you actually at all of the critiques of that study, you will note that it's a very worthy study.

Please don't pretend that one opinion debunks anything.

[KurtNYC]

31. The AUTHORS of the study never made the cherry picked assertion that was in that headline.

The AUTHORS of the study -- are they wrong too??

[HuckleB]

48. LOL!

You just can't handle anything that shows things are different than you think they are. This study is in agreement with what are studies have been finding on the issue. Are you really going to play this silly game?

http://www.cdc.gov/media/dpk/2013/dpk-vs-child-obesity.html

http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2012/rwjf401163

[MissB]

11. Recess is seen as an "extra" that schools can cut down on to allow for extra

"learning" time so kids can pass their standardized tests.

I live in an affluent school district. For the most part, the kids that attend the schools here look much like the kids that I went to school with back in the day - maybe there are a few overweight kids, but not many. School lunches are catered, so there aren't a bunch of fish sticks and tater tots being served. Three recesses a day for elementary and middle school.

I figure that affluent families can probably afford to have their kids in organized sports. (Goodness knows the high school hits me up for $350/sport/kid. I have two kids. That math sucks.)

My kids go on multi-week bicycle trips each summer, packing their own gear on their own bikes. They bike to school. They bike ten miles into downtown. My oldest hates to drive to school (which even I think is weird!) We've made biking a family event since they could get a helmet on their heads and ride in the bike trailer.

But we have time. Or make time. Or something like that.

[SoCalDem]

42. and more and more schools are afraid to let kids play

merry go rounds, jungle gyms, trampolines, and even swings are going away because they fear lawsuits when kids get hurt.

[AwakeAtLast]

12. I have been a teacher for 16 years

and a Music teacher at that.

I have noticed that over the past 16 years more and more students expect to sit back and be entertained. Asking some of them to move or actually do something is asking a lot.

School schedules also don't help - schools have cut recess from at least 60 minutes a day to barely 20. Some schools don't have any recess.

I will say that I don't have very many diabetic students, though, and maybe a few more than average that are obese.

I really think if you fix poverty and our food supply, you will fix obesity.

[BlueJazz]

37. A Music teacher? One of my favorite people. I had some wonderful music teachers when I was young.

[AwakeAtLast]

39. Well, thank you!

I have 1500 students right now (yep, you read that correctly), so I'm not sure how wonderful I am with such a large student load. I try my best!

[jeff47]

13. It's not nearly as simple as you'd like.

I live around a mile from what will eventually be my kids's elementary school.

They won't be walking that mile.

OMG!! OVERPROTECTIVE!!! I WALKED 20 MILES!! UPHILL!! BOTH WAYS!!

No, the problem is we stopped allowing the government to do anything regarding infrastructure. So despite the high traffic load thanks to development, that old 1 mile road is still a two-lane road with no shoulders nor sidewalks. And the owners of the older houses along the road, who are kinda pissed that they aren't "out in the country" anymore, have built fences right next to the road.

I've lived here 18 months and seen 6 bicyclists loaded into ambulances. Because back in the 80s we decided that the government can't mandate any upgrades by the new housing developers, nor can it spend money to upgrade the road. And since it's barely wide enough for two cars, there isn't room to safely walk or bicycle.

Is it all that? No, there's plenty of parent paranoia:
My neighborhood has a small park. My kids don't get to play there by themselves, because they are 1 and 3. There's lots of other parents that won't let their 8 and 10 year-olds play there by themselves. Why? TV news needs ratings. Kidnappings and child deaths are HUGE for ratings. So my neighbors think their kids are in danger from kidnappers lurking in the shadows despite the fact that crimes against children have plummeted in the last three decades. And so their kids can't go to the park alone, and the kids you saw can't walk those 100 yards.

We're all living in a larger society, with a lot of inputs that get us to where we are. There is no single magic cause, and no single magic cure. We've got a lot to fix.

[GoCubsGo]

36. Yep, the lack of infrastructure definitely has a lot to do with it.

I have two bicycles literally rotting in my garage because I have no safe place where I can ride them. There are very few sidewalks in my town for walking, and even in my neighborhood, it's not always safe to go out for a stroll. The idiots drivers here don't seem to understand what is a "residential area", and they come tearing through at 50 mph. I am afraid that one of the neighborhood kids is going to get hit one of these days.

[FreeJoe]

16. I'm not seeing it

Very few of the kids in our area appear overweight. Participation in sports seems much higher than when I was a kid. It's all anecdotal and I don't live in a typical area (if such a thing exists), but the kids around me are healthier than I was as a kid.

[cali]

17. absolutely right.

I am so glad that my son got the opportunity to run, explore and engage in all kinds of physical activity. My fondest memories as a kid- by far- are doing the same- climbing trees, rambling, sledding, etc. My son is now 28 and a beautiful skier, white water kayaker, avid hiker. You have to give kids the opportunity to engage in physical exercise in order to give them a life long love of moving. And personally, I think, they need more than just organized physical play. The element of discovery is an integral part of it.

[meaculpa2011]

18. My daughter was always out playing...

with her friends, running, shooting baskets...

While my son played organized sports, he considered them primarily social.

I coached both of them in every sport, even those I knew nothing about, and encouraged regular exercise, outdoor activities and sensible nutrition.

She continues to be active and he plays computer/card/video games all day and all night. Every take-out joint has our house on their GPS favorites list. He's also about 80 pounds overweight. He's 24 and I'm 63. I'm terrified that I will be attending his funeral, not the other way around as it should be.

The next person that asks: "Why don't you encourage him to...?" is gonna get hit in the face with a brick.

[jen63]

19. I wasn't a helicopter parent.

Neither were most of the parents in our neighborhood. This was in the nineties. If no one was around to hang around with, then he occupied his time with chores and video games, but his favorite thing was to play outside. The only rules were that he stay in the neighborhood and call me with his cell if he was switching houses.

I'll add that his homework was the first priority. By the time he was eight or so, we agreed that he was mature enough to be at home alone for an hour until I got of work. He did his homework while he waited on me to get home. Then it was busting the door to go outside. I moved him to one of the top high schools in the state when he was a sophomore. It was the best decision we ever made, he graduated valedictorian. In this school it really wasn't a big deal. 16% or 64 students graduated valedictorian.

He's now at the US Naval Academy in his second year. You would not believe the stories of helicopter parents at that place. Some are asking about retirement plans for their Midshipman for gawd's sake. These kids aren't even commissioned yet. Mine filled out all of his apps by himself for USNA and also college. He spent a year at OSU (go Bucks), as he didn't receive an appointment the first time he applied. He finally got in on the second try.

I guess what I'm getting at is that no kid who is helicoptered is going to have a bad time trying to navigate the real world. Let your kids loose, depending on their maturity level The trust that is built between you will be invaluable. My kid will tell me anything, because he knows I won't judge him for the decisions he makes and he trusts me enough to tell me personal things.

Sorry for the long post.

[Adrahil]

22. weight and health are not necessarily linked.

Remember that correlation does not equal causation.

If people are fat because they eat poorly and don't exercise, it's usually the poor diet and lack of exercise causing the problems. The fat is just another by-product.

We should encourage people to exercise and eat right, and let the scale balance where it may, so to speak.

The focus on fat is misguided.

[KurtNYC]

24. Increased use of antibiotics, increase in poverty, and general malnutrition

Exercise won't fix these causes. Running 13 miles, half a marathon, would burn roughly the amount of calories in one pint of Ben & Jerrys which can be consumed in 10 minutes or less. Exercise makes you hungrier.

Better solution is to make more nutrient dense foods available which satiate the body's hunger for the nutrients found whole foods.

Antibiotic use in infancy linked to increase in childhood obesity:
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29409087

We should all work to make better options available and stop blaming those who suffer for doing their best with their situation.

[HuckleB]

26. You take one study, with a fairly small increase in concern, and then make a claim...

... that somehow we are using more antibiotics these days.

Can you find a study that shows an increase in antibiotic use in kids over the past five, or ten years?

If you know what's happened in terms of best practices, well...

[KurtNYC]

33. Journal of Pediatrics, Oct 2014 - University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital

Now where's YOUR study?

[HuckleB]

49. You try to claim cherry picking above, even though it doesn't make sense, and then you do it here.

This is some seriously lame sauce you're offering up here. And what's funny is that the study doesn't make the claim you make, which is what you are pretending to cry about above. Goodness gracious.

[Fred Sanders]

27. Brainwash nation that has been brainwashed to obesity and brainwashed into thinking it is acceptable

[HuckleB]

28. What?

[liberal_at_heart]

32. I live just around the corner from my kid's bus stop and I pick him up.

We live in the woods and my son is autistic. I know the likely hood of anything happening is low, but whenever I let him walk home I get panicked. Someone could snatch him and no one would even know. I'm not taking that chance, and my son is a beanpole by the way.

[GoCubsGo]

34. They also eat a lot of crap.

All one has to do is look it the carts of one's fellow grocery shoppers to see how it's happening. Nothing but chicken nuggets, processed crap, breakfast cereals with more sugar in them than a bag of candy, junk food, sugary juices and soft drinks... Not a fruit or vegetable in sight, except maybe some corn or iceberg lettuce. Pair that with the lack of exercise, and it's no wonder more and more kids are obese and diabetic.

Personally, I don't have an issue with kids riding the school bus. I'd prefer they do that than have their parents drive them. The traffic in my town is a bloody nightmare when school starts and lets out. And, a lot of kids live too far away from school to walk. But, they should also bring back Phys. Ed., and there's plenty of time after school to go outside and play.

[Art_from_Ark]

40. I ate all sorts of sugary breakfast cereals back in the '60s

Fruit Loops, Super Sugar Crisp, Sugar Frosted Flakes, Sugar Pops, Cap'n Crunch (with Crunchberries), Lucky Charms, Honeycomb, Frankenberry, Quisp, Trix, Frosted Miniwheats....

And then, there was this one:

Honey on the inside, sugar on the outside
Puffed up wheat, smacked up sweet
Taste that'll knock you off your feet
Kellogg's Sugar Smacks!

[GoCubsGo]

43. I did, too.

I'm still paying for it 40 years later. We ate a lot of that same crap, too, but at least my parents fed us fruits and vegetables, and not as many processed foods. We always had at least one veggie with dinner, and usually salad.

Just the thought of those Sugar Smacks makes me gag. I have a sweet tooth, but eeeewww!

[Art_from_Ark]

50. I just couldn't eat the unsweetened cereal back then

Cheerios, Wheaties, Corn Flakes, Special K, Product 19, Rice Krispies, you name it (although I could eat Raisin Bran if nothing else was available

Although like you, we did get fruits and vegetables, from vegetable stands when in season, canned or frozen when not in season. I hated canned spinach with a passion (even though it was Popeye brand and Popeye was supposed to get (temporarily) strong from eating that stuff), but frozen mixed vegetables were great.

[dilby]

35. You must live in a fat neighborhood because I don't see this.

Maybe your neighborhood has poor access to nutritional foods, do you guy have a grocery store near you?

[mainer]

38. When I was growing up, California schools required 1 hour of PE daily

is this no longer the case in schools? I really don't know.

I remember hating gym class, but in retrospect it was exactly the right thing to make me do.

[MissB]

47. When school budgets are cut, PE is usually on the chopping block.

Along with music, foreign language, librarians and school counselors. Any "extras" are fair game for school administrators.

[Nevernose]

53. German schools require NO gym classes

And yet have much healthier kids.

[seabeyond]

51. bullshit. both boys, no fat kids in their sphere. not saying there are not fat kids.

there are, but not nearly the numbers i hear people say.

when kids were younger, there were chunky kids. who grew, and outgrew the heavy. they were considered fat, instead of letting them grow into their body.

two years ago, picking up freshman son from high school, i noticed how few "fat" kids there were. i had a whole conversation with myself how this "all kids are fat" crap, was crap.

i have two athletic kids. they hang with athletic kids.

your whole argument is crappy and mean and i am tired of certain groups being attacked on du, with applause.

[DustyJoe]

55. Diabetes

It's obvious by remarks that a lot of people have no idea about child onset type 1 diabetes and dietary caused type 2 diabetes.

My grandaughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 9 yrs old after falling to near fatal ketoacidosis. She was slim, fit and active. The insulin producing islets in her pancreas were destroyed by her own agressive immune system response to childhood viruses. Now at 17 she is more heavyset because treatment for diabetes hypoglycemia is carbs and sugar. If she doesnt ingest enough carbs to get her body energy she risks ketoacidosis as the body tries to mfg sugar from fat cells leaving behind acid toxic ketones in her blood that then requires insulin to control. The insulin can burn too much sugar triggering another need for sugar to fight serious sugar lows.

It is a horrible see-saw that never stops going low or high.