Childhood obesity bad for kids

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, First Lady Michelle Obama launched her campaign against childhood obesity with a round of TV appearances in which she discussed her struggles to help her young daughters maintain a healthy weight. She had hardly finished speaking when the roar of her critics erupted: Did she say “chubby”? How dare she embarrass her daughters! She shouldn’t say “diet!”!

There was also a broadside from University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos, author of “The Obesity Myth.” Writing in The New Republic, Campos claimed that Obama’s crusade is “dangerous nonsense.”

Happily, the first lady has has soldiered on in her efforts to draw attention to what is, in fact, an epidemic. An estimated 32 percent of children and adolescents are obese or overweight, according to public health experts. Some of them have already been stricken by chronic ailments that used to be reserved for adulthood, including high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes.

And many of those children live in the South, which, statistically speaking, is the nation’s fattest region. In 2005 (the last year for which statistics were available), an estimated 31.7 percent of Georgia children were overweight or obese. But few states could afford to boast. About 30 percent of California kids were classified as overweight or obese, as were 30.9 percent of children in New York.

Obesity isn’t just a matter of personal choice or individual liberty. Emory University’s Kenneth Thorpe, a professor of public health, says that it’s a leading cause of soaring health care costs. In a report called ” The Future Costs of Obesity,” Thorpe estimates that Georgia currently spends about $2.5 billion a year in direct health-care costs related to obesity. If current trends continue, that would rise to nearly $11 billion by 2018, he says.

As for Campos’ claim that the obesity epidemic is a “myth,” he might spend a little time with Dr. Mark Wulkan, chief surgeon at Children’s Health care of Atlanta. Wulkan has developed a specialty of performing bariatric surgery — a procedure that reduces the size of the stomach — on kids. He has seen adolescents weighing 400 to 400 pounds.

Wulkan, who calls Obama’s campaign “fantastic,” says that, out of an abundant of caution, he has restricted his operations to one or two a month, but “I could be doing several a week, and, to me, that is really scary.”

“People were initially critical of our doing adolescent surgery because they thought we were trying to make them skinny for the prom. What we were trying to do is reverse diabetes, bad joint problems, high blood pressure, things you didn’t see in kids before,” Wulkan said.

Since obese children are more likely to remain obese as adults, it makes sense to try to tackle the problem in childhood, when habits such as eating sensibly and getting regular exercise are more easily influenced. Obama’s initiative, called “Let’s Move,” has four prongs: increased physical activity; more information about nutrition; increased access to healthy foods; and, of course, personal responsibility. The White House has assigned a task forced across Cabinet-level departments to aid the effort.

State Rep. Judy Manning (R-Marietta), calls the First Lady’s campaign “absolutely imperative. I think it’s something we’ve needed for a long, long time.”

Manning tried to push the state legislature to take action to curb childhood obesity a few years ago, but her efforts were stymied. “I think some people thought it was an effort to ridicule and bully children. . .I think people are just now waking up,” she said.