Our Mommyhood

Since the 1960’s the rate of childhood obesity in the United States has more than tripled, with older children and teens more likely to be obese than preschoolers. 12.5 million children and teens are classified as being obese. Mercifully, the increase in obesity rate appears to have leveled off. However, among obese children, a disturbing trend is a significant increase in body mass. In other words, the heaviest are getting even heavier.

Clearly there is a financial cost related to obesity. Health insurance pays roughly three times more in care for an obese child’s care than for the care of an non-obese peer. But measuring costs of psychosocial impact is not so easy. Obese children tend to suffer from low self-esteem, poor body image, depression, school performance difficulties, and learning problems more than normal weight children. However, like the “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” dilemma, it is not known whether these psychosocial problems develop as a consequence of the child’s obesity or are factors that increase the child’s vulnerability to becoming obese.

Regardless of the difficulty measuring psychosocial impact, the cardiovascular risk factors are not so obscure. Risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol, and abnormal glucose tolerance and diabetes, rarely if ever seen in children, is now commonplace. Type 2 Diabetes (not to be mistaken with the unpreventable Type 1 Diabetes known as childhood diabetes) was virtually unheard of in teens prior to the last two decades. Now, 70% of obese children have at least one risk factor and 30% have two or more risk factors making health insurance costs for obesity-related illnesses continue to skyrocket. Health insurance costs totaled more than $150 billion last year for obesity-related illnesses.

So what is fueling the childhood obesity epidemic? Simply stated, obesity results from an energy imbalance where too many calories are consumed and not enough calories are burned in physical activity. But the problem is not that simple. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported in 2010 that “the most important factors underlying the obesity epidemic are the current opportunities for energy intake coupled with limited energy expenditure.” At first glance, the two statements appear to reiterate one another. However a closer reading of the second statement hints at confounding variables on both sides of the energy equation.

On the consumption side of the equation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) points out a shift in the eating habits of Americans. One of the shifts in food consumption involves schools. In the United States today, 30 million children get the majority of their calories from school. And a 2010 study from the National Survey of Children’s Health concluded that there is a correlation between eligibility for free or reduced-cost lunch or breakfast programs at public schools and an increase in children’s BMI. Further fueling the obesity epidemic is fast-food dining, a family norm rather than an exception, and exploding portion sizes all around us.

To make matters worse, the energy imbalance is further skewed toward a rise in childhood obesity by lack of physical activity. Whereas thirty years ago children use to walk to school every day, run around at recess, have gym class, and play outside for hours after school before dinner.  Today a typical United States child or teen spends more than four hours a day in front of some type of screen. And despite the obesity epidemic, school physical education programs are suffering from budget cuts; in some cases being slashed from curriculums all together.

This year, the White House unveiled a campaign to fight childhood obesity. The “Let’s Move” campaign is an initiative launched by Michelle Obama to end childhood obesity in one generation. In the initiative, the cost of childhood obesity is acknowledged not only in terms of rising health insurance costs but also in that “the physical and emotional health of an entire generation and the economic health and security of our nation are at stake.”

Blake is a writer, health nut, and always on the lookout for a good dental plan.  After all, your mouth is the first thing people notice when you smile!

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