"I wash myself with a rag on a stick." – Bart Simpson
NORTH AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE AT RISK of dying at a younger average age than their parents’ generation. It seems odd, considering the advances in medicine and health awareness; yet, many children today are overweight, too many dangerously so.
According to the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation, obesity rates have increased dramatically among children between the ages of 2 and 17. In 1979, for instance, 3% of children were obese. By 2004, this figure had almost tripled, while an additional 18% were deemed ‘simply’ overweight. Taken together, more than a quarter of Canadian children – one in four – are either overweight or obese.
The National Association of Children's Hospitals claims 30% of boys and 40% of girls born in 2000 are at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes as a direct result of being overweight. There are more and more cases every year of children developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes, all due to obesity. These diseases were previously almost unknown to pediatricians.
The usual suspects we identify in a police lineup range from the World Wide Web and video games to fast food supersizers like McDonald's. While these have all contributed to this seemingly insatiable crisis, they are not the root cause of childhood obesity in North America today.
THE PROBLEM BEGINS AND ENDS WITH PARENTS. While an eight year old doesn't have the resources to buy a Big Mac and super-sized soda, he or she does have access to the people {or enablers} with the money, transportation and, most importantly, the willingness to do so. WHY DO THEY DO IT? Why do parents continue to enable once {not so} little Timmy reaches his tenth birthday and celebrates by remembering not to mix grapefruit juice with his cholesterol medication? Why do they permit him to sit around all day playing video games when he could be doing something active? Why do they opt for convenience over their child’s wellbeing?
While parents bear the burden of responsibility, the ‘family’ is more burdened today than ever before. Children from wealthier families are less likely to be obese than children from lower-income families. The reasons for this are many, and range from the fact that wealthier families have more disposable income to spend on fitness memberships and organic provisions (usually more expensive than generic food) to the fact that modest-income families tend to work more hours per week and have less disposable time to devote to soccer practice or swim meets. While the Heart and Stroke Foundation encourages parents to ‘schedule family outings that are active such as hiking a provincial park trail’, these luxuries are not always practical for a growing number of overburdened families, especially single-parent units, struggling to make ends meet.
HOW CAN WE SOLVE THIS PROBLEM? If the current generation does end up dying at a younger average age than their parents, it will be entirely due to a preventable and treatable cause. We can chalk it up to our failure as a community.
The solution must begin with responsible government and a shift in mindset.
Government must take the lead in the fight against obesity. A luxury tax on the price of junk food, like tobacco, would provide the monetary resources necessary for government to act, while also reducing the amount of money consumers spend on unhealthy foodstuff. Taxing junk food and redistributing the dollars to families in the form of fitness subsidies would help parents afford the hefty budget burden often associated with healthy and well-balanced lifestyles. This would permit more parents the luxury of enrolling their children in team sports, for instance, or perhaps encourage them to enroll in health-oriented cooking courses.
A stroll through any typical neighbourhood would show that fewer children spend their time outdoors playing street hockey than before. Physical education is critical if we are going to stem the tide and governments need to make exercise an integral part of the core curriculum across all school boards. According to NACH, Illinois is the only state that mandates daily physical education in all state-run schools. In Canada, the overwhelming majority of schools allot no more than one to two hours of phys-ed per week. Simply put, this is not enough.
We must be accountable. The time has come for us to stop blaming McDonald's and deflecting responsibility for raising a generation of fat kids on some intangible culprit called the media or society. Humanity has fallen very far indeed when the current crisis facing the Western world can be solved through responsible eating habits while there are millions who die every year from malnutrition and starvation.
THE TIME HAS COME for us to take ownership of the obesity epidemic and implement the steps necessary to ensure we don't abandon our community to heart attacks and diabetes. We must take a stance against the convenience of apathy or risk facing a dismal future. {w}
the {great} leap foward: volume i, issue iii
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