Get Schooled Can schools stop obesity? Should they even try?
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As an editorial writer, I met with representatives of national groups advocating dozens of good and worthy causes, from physical fitness to drug awareness to improved civics literacy.
In many cases, ground zero for the advocacy groups was the schoolhouse. Advocates felt that they needed to reach children to achieve the necessary changes/improvements.
But if all these well-meaning groups prevailed, we’d have two options: Reduce the class time for actual reading and math instruction or expand to a 12-hour school day.
I still wonder how much of what is ailing America can be addressed by schools. Is obesity one of those problems?
An AJC story today reports that the obesity epidemic is soaring among children, with 7.3 percent of boys and 5.5 percent of girls classified as extremely obese in a California study. (I noticed this a few weeks ago when I was looking at the Website of a Georgia nature center. The video showed schoolchildren taking a class on a beach, and I was struck by how many of the students were overweight.
While it’s fine to take soda machines out of schools, students often still go home to pantries full of Cokes, chips and cookies. I am not sure that schools can counter what’s in the home cupboards. But the problem is getting serious enough that a national response may be required.
According to the story:
The news is even worse for black and Hispanic kids: Among black teenage girls, 11.9 percent were classified as extremely obese, as were 11.2 percent of Hispanic teenage boys. Extreme obesity among children is defined as weighing more than 1.2 times the 95th percentile, or having a body-mass index (BMI) of 35 kilograms per meter squared.
“There is an alarming high frequency of extremely obese children,” said study author Corinna Koebnick, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation in Pasadena.
Koebnick said the obesity epidemic is driven by a combination of lack of physical activity and poor eating habits. “It’s unhealthy eating habits — fast food versus slow food,” she said.
Parents need to be role models for their children, Koebnick stressed. “There are studies suggesting parent’s weight has a significant influence on the child’s weight,” she noted.
Extreme obesity can lead to serious health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, Koebnick added.
“We need to watch these extremely obese kids more carefully, and we need to try to prevent adverse health effects that may come up in the near future,” she said.
“Children who are extremely obese may continue to be extremely obese as adults, and all the health problems associated with obesity are in these children’s futures. Without major lifestyle changes, these kids face a 10 to 20 years shorter life span and will develop health problems in their 20s that we typically see in 40- [to] 60-year-olds,” Koebnick said in a Kaiser Permanente news release.
The public is bombarded with food advertising that targets children, Heller said. The 2008 Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress found that more than $1.6 billion was spent in 2006 marketing food and beverages to children.
“Imagine if that money, or even a fraction of it, was used to promote healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans, and nutrition education for the public,” she said. “People would learn how to buy and prepare healthy foods on a budget and we could reduce the prevalence of obesity and chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer, in our children,” Heller explained.
by Maureen Downey
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