Childhood obesity increasing crisis

By MICHELLE ALEJANDRA BOOTH

VIEW ON HEALTH

Childhood obesity is becoming a fast-growing issue among children in the United States, in fact if rates continue the same; this generation of children will be the first in American history to live shorter lives than their parents, according to the American Heart Association.

One in three children in the United States are considered overweight which is roughly 32 percent, but locally the problem is even more severe with 38 percent of children in Nevada who fall under that category.

"The problem with childhood obesity is that there is not just one cause and one solution. We are concerned because overweight children become overweight adults and we need to break that cycle," said Nicole Bungum, who works in Office of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health promotion with the Southern Nevada Health District.

Studies published by the CDC indicate that approximately 80 percent of children who were overweight between 10 and 15 years of age were obese adults at the age of 25.

The problem is so severe on a local level that according to research by healthyamericans.org Nevada has the 11th highest percentage of overweight and obese children in the nation.

While there is no research as to why Nevada has such poor rates in obesity Benjamin Schmauss, Healthy Schools relationship manager for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation says the untraditional schedules could be a contributor.

"Based on my understanding of family units, untraditional schedules lead to untraditional roles within the families," said Schmauss.

In fact, with the local workforce being in the hotel industry, many parents work evenings and weekends and that inhibits the supervision of their children's food intake.

Another correlation could be that fact that children who have obese or overweight parents have a great risk of being overweight themselves, according to research publishes in the July issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.

With roughly 63 percent of Nevadans considered obese or overweight, the 37 percent childhood overweight rates is not so surprising.

What is surprising is how much younger children are becoming overweight.

Byann Blakeney, is a health specialist at Accelero Head Start and sees children as young as three to five years old who need intervention.

"Some of the parents are surprised to hear that their children are overweight, others had an idea that their child may be unhealthy but they didn't know the seriousness of it," Blakeney said.

According to Blakeney a lot of parents feel that the child still has baby fat and will "grow out of it" as they get older.

The percentage of children in Nevada entering kindergarten who are overweight is about 35 percent according to researches at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and among Hispanic children the rates are even more alarming with 44 percent of them considered overweight.

These high rates of obesity is why Accelero Head Start does a nutritional assessment for all the children and helps parents create health plans to get their children to a normal weight.

"Most of the time I feel that the kids this age are active enough, but I think they are eating the wrong things," said Blakeney.

"They eat a lot of greasy foods and a lot of fast foods and sometimes when they go to fast food restaurants parents make the mistake of the letting the child decide what they are going to eat instead of making sure children chose the apple snacks options to replace the fries," Blakeney said.

However as Bungum mentioned earlier pinpointing the root cause of childhood obesity is very difficult because there are so many factors.

"There is a rise in technology, kids are spending more time in front of the screen on the computer, television or playing video games and not being active at the rate they used to be. Families are also eating out a lot more which corresponds in a rise in obesity and one of the important factors, physical education at schools has been cut," said Bungum.

However, while parents are the main enforcers of a healthy lifestyle certain factors can be out of the parents' control.

"Socioeconomic status has a lot to do with children being overweight. Oftentimes there are not as many grocery stores in those areas as there are fast food restaurants and gas stations where kids can buy unhealthy foods. Also with parents working two jobs they want their kids indoors when they are not home so they don't get a lot of physical activity. Certain areas might also not be safe for children to play outside," said Schmauss.

Other times the parents might not be well educated on what is nutritious and what is harmful for their children.

Blakeney says she sees parents giving their children lots of juice, not realizing that they can be high in sugar and preservatives as well as confusing flavored drinks like Sunny D-Light with good supplemental drinks. Others are still giving their children whole milk.

"And definitely not enough water. Children need to drink more water," she added.

Because children are still growing and in some awkward stages of life tend to look overweight before hitting a growth spurt, medical professionals say that the most efficient way to tell if a child is overweight is by measuring his/her Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI is a measure of weight in relation to height ranking the in a percentile from obese and overweight to normal weight and underweight.

If a child is found to be overweight or on the brink of being overweight, Blakeney recommends parents get a nutritional assessment from school staff that are trained to do that or their pediatrician as well as placing greater emphasis on making sure the child gets more physical activity, preferably away from the screen. Medline recently reported that the children spend an average of 8 hours a day using media from cell phones to Internet and watching television, leading to an increase in a sedentary lifestyle.

Not addressing these issues can have short- and long-term complications for a child, including a risk of developing heart disease and type 2 diabetes and having shorter life span.

USA Today reports that obese children have increased pressure in the brain causing headaches and double vision, asthma, sleep apnea, shortness of breath, high cholesterol and blood pressure, pain in weight-bearing joints such as feet, knees, hips and lower back and poor self-esteem.

Experts from the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey revealed that low self-esteem and obesity leads adolescents to develop riskier habits such as smoking and drinking alcohol.

"Children's awareness of obesity is a little bit different because they don't think about diabetes and cancer or mortality but they do worry about the social ramification of being overweight," Schmauss said.

Schmuass who works with older children said that if taught properly they can be in charge of their own nutrition.

"We teach them to have a food log and they should treat it like a bank, they shouldn't put in much more than what they can put out as far as calories go," Schmauss said.

Childhood obesity has become such a hot topic that the First Lady Michelle Obama took it on as her biggest issue launching the Childhood Obesity Campaign "Let's Move" that calls for getting parents more informed about nutrition and exercise, improving quality of food in schools, making healthy foods more affordable and accessible and focusing on more physical education.

"This doesn't require any fancy tools or technologies. We have everything we need right now, we have the information, we have the ideas and we have the desire to start solving America's childhood obesity problem," Mrs. Obama said. "The only question is whether we have the will."