I want your thoughts on the Child Obesity problem in the US

eyedclaar

Jason P wrote:

was anyone else forced to climb a 50' rope to the top of the gymnasium rafters in school?

C'mon, they put a 1 inch thick wrestling mat below the rope. Surely, that would have somehow lessened the compund fractures...

Jason P

eyedclaar wrote:

Jason P wrote:

was anyone else forced to climb a 50' rope to the top of the gymnasium rafters in school?

C'mon, they put a 1 inch thick wrestling mat below the rope. Surely, that would have somehow lessened the compund fractures...

Anyway, it's almost impossible to hurt yourself when you are a kid. I remember climbing small trees until trunk was small enough that it would bend the tree in half and lower me back to the ground. I climbed a tree a few years back and thought I would have to call the F.D. to get me out.

I also remember launching myself out of swing-sets and falling 15 feet into pea gravel and then immediately doing it again. Today, that would result in either my premature death or paralysis.

gimmesometruth27

Jason P wrote:

Those are some good ideas. Also, they let you shoot bow and arrows in PE? They took us golfing one day and I think three kids were injured.

Also, I wonder if they still have the rope in PE classes. I imagine that it has gone the way of the dodo due to liability issues, but was anyone else forced to climb a 50' rope to the top of the gymnasium rafters in school?

yes we had indoor archery in grade 9 or something. then we had bowling also. talk about not exerting many more calories than wlking 50 feet. i guess chasing after the arrows that repeatedly missed the targets qualified as exercise?

i didn't work in an elementary school, so i do not know about the rope. i would think that they stopped that when they stopped teaching wrestling in elementary school and stopped dodgeball and "bombardment" due to liability. but i remember climbing up to the rafters and having a weird feeling in my junk afterward lol...

i do think that PE should be used for education to teach them things that they can use for their lifetime, such as nutrition, proper wound care, proper first aid/injury care, c.p.r, proper stretching and flexibility (the number one reason for most athletic injuries and low back pain that costs us billions a year in lost wages, but i digress), and proper maintainance of the human body. people would live longer, be less obese, and be less sick if they were taught how to be well. parents obviously can not teach them all of these things, so the schools should have a hand in it IMO..

gimmesometruth27

Jason P wrote:

eyedclaar wrote:

Jason P wrote:

was anyone else forced to climb a 50' rope to the top of the gymnasium rafters in school?

C'mon, they put a 1 inch thick wrestling mat below the rope. Surely, that would have somehow lessened the compund fractures...

Anyway, it's almost impossible to hurt yourself when you are a kid. I remember climbing small trees until trunk was small enough that it would bend the tree in half and lower me back to the ground. I climbed a tree a few years back and thought I would have to call the F.D. to get me out.

I also remember launching myself out of swing-sets and falling 15 feet into pea gravel and then immediately doing it again. Today, that would result in either my premature death or paralysis.

older people and adults do not fall well for a few reasons.

1. they are not used to falling so they lack the body control of how to position themselves to fall safely.

2. adults have larger body mass, weigh more, have more bone density, all of those things make you fall harder and create more trauma. i see people who have fallen every day and most times if they get to our office it was not pretty. so it is a good thing to be scared of falling. it is human instinct as an adult.

BhagavadGita

mikepegg44 wrote:

I do not buy the too poor to eat well argument. If you are not homeless you can eat foods that are good for you, they may not be the best quality organic fruits and vegetables, but you can still eat well. I was poor as shit for 3 years, the kind of poor where you have to choose what bills you are paying every month, the kind of poor that has no heat in the winter, and in minneapolis that is f'n cold, and I still was able to get good foods to eat. Luckily I grew up knowing what those were so I was able to maximize my dollars with the knowledge I had...
it isn't a rich poor issue, is it easier to eat well if you are rich...absolutely, but it is not exclusive to rich people. And trust me, there are fat kids who are rich, I see them everyday when I coach hockey in a well off area of the twin cities...are there people who are too poor to eat well...yep, but that is a vast minority.

I completely disagree. I have volunteered at a well stocked food bank for 3 years. I have been in the van as it goes around to local grocery stores and picked up donations, I have worked the line where people choose what they want.........Do you know what is donated more than anything?.................
................ Pastries. Bread. Rolls. Pies. Cakes. Cupcakes....all that over sugared crap that won't sell in the bakery. White flour which turns into sugar, which turns into fat. Many of the people i see in the distribution line have limited choices. Why? Although we do get some fresh vegetables, we dont' have enough to go around. And I'm talking poor. Some of these people have no income at all. Do you think they give a shit how healthy something is, they will eat anything and take anything to feed their children.

On another note. If we want kids to slim down, TURN OFF THE BLOODY TV!

Kel Varnsen

BhagavadGita wrote:

mikepegg44 wrote:

I do not buy the too poor to eat well argument. If you are not homeless you can eat foods that are good for you, they may not be the best quality organic fruits and vegetables, but you can still eat well. I was poor as shit for 3 years, the kind of poor where you have to choose what bills you are paying every month, the kind of poor that has no heat in the winter, and in minneapolis that is f'n cold, and I still was able to get good foods to eat. Luckily I grew up knowing what those were so I was able to maximize my dollars with the knowledge I had...
it isn't a rich poor issue, is it easier to eat well if you are rich...absolutely, but it is not exclusive to rich people. And trust me, there are fat kids who are rich, I see them everyday when I coach hockey in a well off area of the twin cities...are there people who are too poor to eat well...yep, but that is a vast minority.

I completely disagree. I have volunteered at a well stocked food bank for 3 years. I have been in the van as it goes around to local grocery stores and picked up donations, I have worked the line where people choose what they want.........Do you know what is donated more than anything?.................
................ Pastries. Bread. Rolls. Pies. Cakes. Cupcakes....all that over sugared crap that won't sell in the bakery. White flour which turns into sugar, which turns into fat. Many of the people i see in the distribution line have limited choices. Why? Although we do get some fresh vegetables, we dont' have enough to go around. And I'm talking poor. Some of these people have no income at all. Do you think they give a shit how healthy something is, they will eat anything and take anything to feed their children.

On another note. If we want kids to slim down, TURN OFF THE BLOODY TV!

There is something kind of fucked up if people who are so hungry they are going to food banks are obese.

BhagavadGita

You missed my point, some people are heavier due to the sugar content of foods handed out.

whygohome

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39276141/ns ... nutrition/


WASHINGTON — Obesity puts a drag on the wallet as well as health, especially for women.

Doctors have long known that medical bills are higher for the obese, but that is only a portion of the real-life costs.

George Washington University researchers added in things like employee sick days, lost productivity, even the need for extra gasoline — and found the annual cost of being obese is $4,879 for a woman and $2,646 for a man.

That is far more than the cost of being merely overweight — $524 for women and $432 for men, concluded the report being released Tuesday, which analyzed previously published studies to come up with a total.

Why the difference between the sexes? Studies suggest larger women earn less than skinnier women, while wages don't differ when men pack on the pounds. That was a big surprise, said study co-author and health policy professor Christine Ferguson.

Researchers had expected everybody's wages to suffer with obesity, but "this indicates you're not that disadvantaged as a guy, from a wage perspective," said Ferguson, who plans to study why.

Then consider that obesity is linked to earlier death. While that is not something people usually consider a pocketbook issue, the report did average in the economic value of lost life. That brought women's annual obesity costs up to $8,365, and men's to $6,518.

The report was financed by one of the manufacturers of gastric banding, a type of obesity surgery.

The numbers are in line with other research and are not surprising, said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and health economist at Duke University who wasn't involved in the new report.

Two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, and childhood obesity has tripled in the past three decades. Nearly 18 percent of adolescents now are obese, facing a future of diabetes, heart disease and other ailments.

Looking at the price tag may help policymakers weigh the value of spending to prevent and fight obesity, said Schulman, pointing to factors like dietary changes over the past 30 years and physical environments that discourage physical activity.

"We're paying a very high price as a society for obesity, and why don't we think about it as a problem of enormous magnitude to our economy?" he asks. "We're creating obesity and we need to do a man-on-the-moon effort to solve this before those poor kids in elementary school become diabetic middle-aged people."

A major study published last year found medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for the obese than normal-weight people. Tuesday's report added mostly work-related costs — things like sick days and disability claims — related to those health problems.

It also included a quirky finding, a study that calculated nearly 1 billion additional gallons of gasoline (3.8 billion liters) are used every year because of increases in car passengers' weight since 1960.

whygohome

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/158948.php

Obesity Healthcare Costs US 147 Billion Dollars A Year, New Study
28 Jul 2009

The annual healthcare cost of obesity in the US has doubled in less than a decade and may be as high as 147 billion dollars a year says new government-sponsored research.

The study was conducted by researchers at RTI International, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is published in the 27 July issue of the health policy journal Health Affairs.

For the study, which was funded by the CDC Foundation, lead author Dr Eric Finkelstein, director of RTI's Public Health Economics Program, and colleagues analyzed data from the 1998 and 2006 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys.

They found that:

* In 1998 the medical costs of obesity in the US were estimated at around 78.5 billion dollars a year, half of which was financed by Medicare and Medicaid (government health insurance for seniors and families on low incomes).

* Between 1998 and 2006, the prevalence of obesity in the US went up by 37 per cent.

* This rise in obesity prevalence added 40 billion dollars to the annual healthcare bill for obesity.

* The annual healthcare costs of obesity could be as high as 147 billion dollars for 2008.

* Obesity is now responsible for 9.1 per cent of annual medical costs compared with 6.5 per cent in 1998.

* The medical costs for an obese person are 42 per cent higher than for a person of normal weight.

* This equates to an additional 1,429 dollars per year: the costs for an obese person on Medicare are even greater.

* Much of the additional Medicare cost for an obese person are the result of the added prescription drug benefit.

* Medicare prescription drug payments for obese recipients are about 600 dollars a year more than for normal weight recipients.

* Obesity accounts for 8.5 per cet of Medicare expenditure, 11.8 per cent of Medicaid expenditure, and 12.9 per cent of private insurance expenditure.

The authors defined obesity as having a body mass index, BMI, higher than 30. BMI is the ratio of a person's weight in kilos to the square of their height in metres.

Finkelstein told the press that:

"Although bariatric surgery and other treatments for obesity are increasing in popularity, in actuality these treatments remain rare."

"As a result, the medical costs attributable to obesity are almost entirely a result of costs generated from treating the diseases that obesity promotes," he added, suggesting that as long as obesity prevails to the extent that it does today, it will continue to be a significant burden on health care.

Representatives of the CDC are discussing the findings of the study together with new recommendations for preventing and reducing the impact of obesity in communities at "Weight of the Nation", a three-day conference that started on Monday and is being held in Washington, DC.

The CDC describes how it arrived at the recommendations in the 24 July issue of its weekly MMWR Recommendations and Reports.

The recommendations cover 24 strategies in six areas: promoting availability of healthy food; supporting choice of healthy food; encouraging breastfeeding; promoting exercise and physical activity in children and young people; creating communities where people feel safe to exercise and be more physically active; and helping communities organize for change.

"Annual Medical Spending Attributable To Obesity: Payer- And Service-Specific Estimates."
Eric A. Finkelstein, Justin G. Trogdon, Joel W. Cohen, and William Dietz.
Health Affairs , Web Exclusive, July 27, 2009

"Recommended Community Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States."
Laura Kettel Khan, Kathleen Sobush, Dana Keener, Kenneth Goodman, Amy Lowry, Jakub Kakietek, Susan Zaro.
For the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
MMWR Recommendations and Reports, July 24, 2009, Volume 58 Number RR-7 (PDF download).

Sources: RTI, CDC.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today

whygohome

To sum up the articles that I posted: We are a lazy, gluttonous society.

Nothing breaks my heart more than seeing obese parents with their an obese child (under 10 years of age or so)
Good parenting job.

To recap: We are a lazy, gluttonous society.

eyedclaar

whygohome wrote:

To sum up the articles that I posted: We are a lazy, gluttonous society.

Nothing breaks my heart more than seeing obese parents with their an obese child (under 10 years of age or so)
Good parenting job.

To recap: We are a lazy, gluttonous society.

I am 37 years old and in way better physical shape than like over 90% of the kids I see these days. I'd thrash them all at once, that's right, every kid in America... at once. Bring it on, you punks!

Commy

acoustic guy wrote:

I keep reading how big of a problem this is and I try to beat it by keeping my children as healthy as possible.
Even though I lean toward the far right, and I DONT like big government in our lives I feel something has to be done about this.
Its obvious that most parents are MORONS! And that they either are to stupid to see that what they are doing to the kids is a form of abuse, or that they just simply dont care.
If people wont educate themselves about health and nutrition in this day and age then maybe the Government does need to help.
(NOT TRYING TO BE RACIST) But.....its even worse in minority families from what I have read. (Just writing what I have read). Its worse because many cities like Atlantic City dont even have a Super Market! But the reason for that is a whole nother discussion in itself. I watched a few documentries on the Food in America and its a=scary as fucking hell!!!
All kids eat today are heavy carbs, sugar and salt!!!
Horrible.

you said it.


parents are morons.



there is no need for government.

haffajappa

has anyone ever seen Jamie Oliver Food Revolution?
some kids didn't even know what a potato was!