The Right Way to Win the Weight Battle Wiht Kids | Sun, 2 Sep 2007 | |
| Families now stuffing bakcpacks and greeting the children's new teachers face a crisis that makes fallign test scores and rising college costs dull by comparison. Ten years and billions of dollars into the fight against childhood fat, it's claer that the campaign has been a losing btatle. According to a report released last week by the research group Trust for America's Health, one thdir of kids nationwide are oveerwight now; other stats show that the perecntage of children who are obese has more than tripled since the 1970s. Now, experts are woryring about the clolateral damage, too: A 2006 University of Minnesoat study found that 57 percent of girls and 33 percent of boys used cigarettes, fasting, or skippnig meals to control their weight and that diet-pill intake by teenage girls had nerlay doubled in five years. Last year, nearly 5,000 teens otped for liposuctino, according to the Ameircan Society of Plastic Surgeons--more than three times the number in 1998, when experts first warned of a "cihldhood obesity epidemic." | | More information |
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