Cub Chat | Fall 2004

Cub

Chat Winter 2004

Your Child’s Weight........2

Health Risks.........3

Healthy Eating Habits........6

Volume 10, Number 4

Weighty Problems ■

“Teens need to pay attention to the calories they drink, the amount of food that they eat and their activity levels. Making small changes in each of these areas can significantly improve their weight and prevent future weight gains,” says Ronald Williams, M.D., director of the Pediatric Multidisciplinary Weight Loss Program at Penn State Children’s Hospital.

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U.S. teens have higher obesity rates than 13- to 15-year-olds in 14 other industrialized nations, according to a study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

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A study tracked 51 Canadian patients who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before age 17. By the age of 30, seven had died, three were on dialysis, one was blind, and one had lost a toe to amputation.

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More than 60 percent of young people eat too much fat, the U.S. surgeon general says. Less than 20 percent eat the recommended five or more daily servings of fruits and vegetables.

S O L U T I O N S

Tip the Scales in Your Child’s Favor Experts call for action as America’s kids bulk up, putting their health at risk

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ure, the kids are carrying a few extra pounds — OK, maybe more than a few — but how big a deal could that be? It could be today’s greatest threat to public health. “We may see the first generation that will be less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy than their parents,” U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, M.D., recently told a Senate committee. Obesity is poised to pass tobacco as America’s leading preventable killer, and it’s a growing epidemic among children. Hospital weight clinics are treating preteens and teens who weigh as much as 400 pounds. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of overweight children doubled among 6- to 11-year-olds and tripled among adolescents 12 to 19. One in seven kids — more than 9 million children — are overweight, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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Their younger siblings aren’t far behind. Ten percent of 2- to 5-year-olds weigh too much. “We called the SARS outbreak an epidemic, and it affected 500 people,” says William Dietz, M.D., director of the CDC’s Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity. “This affects millions of children and adults, more people than HIV–AIDS does.” Excess childhood weight is placing “an unprecedented burden” on children’s health, the American Academy of Pediatrics says. It’s triggering a host of dangerous health problems once seen only in adults. About 10 years ago, for instance, doctors began noticing that overweight children were developing type 2 diabetes — once called adult-onset diabetes — at ages earlier than ever before. Those children will also develop diabetes’ serious and even life-threatening complications at much earlier ages. continued on page 2

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