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#3
Super-sized
“DIABETES”
It's Saturday afternoon at the shopping mall and the
Weathervane is teeming with customers.
Good prices and a convenient location make the restaurant a
popular place for families, but the real draw is its trademark -
gigantic portions of food. Customers
choose from huge servings of fish, massive hamburgers and piles of
French fried potatoes. "Small" sodas are actually large,
and "large" drinks hold more than a liter. There is no
limit to the rolls and pickles, and rich cakes and sundaes
awaiting those who still have room. Many do.
As
the economy booms, double-income American families are eating out
more. Obesity rates are soaring, and are starting to affect
children as much as adults. "What
we're seeing is children with adult kinds of disease, which is
something that you never used to see," says Jean
Harvey-Berino, a professor of nutrition and food sciences at the
University of Vermont. "We're
seeing children with hypertension. We're seeing children with high
blood cholesterol levels. We're seeing children with Type 2
diabetes, which used to be considered the adult version of
diabetes."
According
to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), over half, or about 97
million Americans, are overweight. Of those, some four million are
more than 46 kilograms heavier than they should be, resulting in
mortality rates about ten times that of the general population in
the same age group.
For
children, the obesity rate is about one in five. Obesity-related
diseases are starting to affect children as young as age five, but
are also turning up in school-aged children and adolescents.
The
trend has appeared so fast that genetic factors can be all but
ruled out as a cause, "We
have noticed that it is probably more related to a decrease in
physical activity and to eating larger portions. It is simply the
'super size' phenomenon of getting servings that are ten times
bigger than they need to be."
With schools under pressure to increase class time and
raise the quality of education, physical education gets less
attention, so children are not as likely to go outside and expend
energy. "Like
music and art," she says, "people see physical education
as dispensable."
Over-stressed
American parents also commonly resort to sweets as behavior
modification tools. At a Friendly's Ice Cream parlor recently, a
young couple silenced their screeching toddler and 5- year-old
with hefty hot fudge sundaes.
What
concerns Harvey-Berino is what will happen to today's obese
children when they become adults. "We don't really know what the long-term effects will
be. OR DO WE?
To
see more items from our second issue just click here; Issue 2
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FACT:
Cardiovascular
disease accounts for 75% of all related deaths in diabetic
patients.
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