Kids and Fat

Spurlock writes:

Sixteen percent of American kids are now overweight or obese. As of September 2004, nine million American kids between the age of six and eighteen were obese. Kids are starting to clock in as obese as early as the age of two.

This is a complicated issue, but the gist of my complaint here is that there's no reliable way to measure "average" or "ideal" weight in kids. The statistics Spurlock cites use data from decades-old insurance tables. On those tables, arbitrary cutoffs along percentile lines classified this kid or that kid as "overweight" or "obese" -- kids in the 90th percentile, for example, were automatically considered dangerously overweight. Today, researchers still use those same tables, weights, and cutoffs from decades ago, but simply plug in the weights of today's kids against percentile cutoffs set decades ago. Since today's kids are maturing at earlier ages than kids of twenty or thirty years ago, they're naturally going to be heavier at earlier ages. Weighed against those older tables, then, today's kids are going to look fat.

I wrote the foreword to a forthcoming research paper by Dr. Paul Robison that covers this very issue (it'll be released on Monday). The meat of the paper: There's no real evidence that today's kids are dangerously overweight. There's no evidence that the weight most of them are carrying is unhealthy. And there's no real evidence that curbing marketing and advertising or access to junk food will help them lose whatever extra weight they are carrying. I'll post a link to the paper when it's released next week.

And as regular readers of my blog know by now, today's adolescent or teen is still 200-700 times more likely to have anorexia or bulimia than to have Type II Diabetes. So all of this focus on weight and food with respect to kids is probably doing a hell of a lot more harm than good.

Comments

[Drew]

Your claim: "Since today's kids are maturing at earlier ages than kids of twenty or thirty years ago, they're naturally going to be heavier at earlier ages," is quite backwards. Kids today enter puberty sooner because they are heavier, not because they just are. Puberty starts from 7 to 12 years of age when the child has 5 to 7 percent body fat. Children are (probably) not being affected by hormones in milk as some claim, but they are chubby, and that gets their bodies started sooner on the road to physical maturity.

Early puberty is a symptom of higher average body fat, not the other way around.

Also, the last sentance, comparing rates of a psychological disorder with a physical disorder, is rather misleading, if not dishonest.

[Radley Balko]

Obesity is a physical disorder when it's caused by genetics or hormonal irregularities. In most cases, it's not physical. Frankly, in most instances, I'm not ready to call it a "disorder." It's the physical manifestation of the choices people make. If obesity is a physical disorder, why do nutrition activists think they can solve it by barring marketing and advertising to children?

And I'm not sure how or why that last sentence is misleading. This constant focusing on how fat kids are, to the point of weighing them (as some schools have), is ridiculous given that there's a far worse problem that such focus is only going to make worse.

[Drew]

It's misleading because diseases that have completely different causes are not comparable in the context presented (Type II Diabetes and Anorexia/Bulimia). You can say they are both the product of a culture with plentifull food and high social pressure to be thin, but the fact that Type II Diabetes occours less than Anorexia/Bulimia is meaningless as a comparison unless you just want to stir people up with misleading sound bites that have face value but no real validity.

Why? Because Anoriexa and Bulimia generally start during teenage years and are caused by negative self-image. It's all in their heads and they're teens. They are more likely to act on destructive impulses.

Type II Diabetes is a much more common disease overall (about 600% if you want a nice big number to chuck around) and happens to people of any age who are overweight. See how invalid comparisons can go both ways?

The two diseases are totally different, both in cause, and in victim demographic. This is also why the government tells half of us we are fat: so we look out for ourselves better! Better to have half of America on an exercise bike than have more sick people.

[Anastasiya]

Dear Mr. Morgan,

We are the russian televison crew and will be in New York from the 30th of October 2007. We are planning to make one special report about fat people and their life. So as you know a lot about it, we would be thankful if you could find a possibility to meet with us and give us an interview about this theme.

May be you could advice us something also for our report.

Best wishes,
Anastasiya
producer of 3 TV channel
karataevatv@yandex.ru

[bored]

Oh I get it, you're fat, aren't you?

[Abadani]

I think child obesity is the result of eating too much junk food.
Kids eat foods and drinks crammed with sugar, fat and salt because they are
advertised vigorously. Parents also keep their kids indoor for the fear of traffic and kidnappers.
One more reason might be firm spread of fast food.

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