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How to Win the Weight Battle |
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Sunday, 02 September 2007 |
Families now stuffing backpacks and greeting the children's new
teachers face a crisis that makes falling test scores and rising
college costs dull by comparison. Ten years and billions of dollars
into the fight against childhood fat, it's clear that the campaign has
been a losing battle. According to a report released last week by the
research group Trust for America's Health, one third of kids nationwide
are overweight now; other stats show that the percentage of children
who are obese has more than tripled since the 1970s. Now, experts are
worrying about the collateral damage, too: A 2006 University of
Minnesota study found that 57 percent of girls and 33 percent of boys
used cigarettes, fasting, or skipping meals to control their weight and
that diet-pill intake by teenage girls had nearly doubled in five
years. Last year, nearly 5,000 teens opted for liposuction, according
to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons—more than three times the
number in 1998, when experts first warned of a "childhood obesity
epidemic." Read the rest at US News |
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