Study: Many kids too fat by preschool - Yahoo! News
The "Duh!" factor - hard at work!
There is no doubt that small kids are getting fatter, younger. Just look around yourself in any supermarket - you'll see fat kids, usually with fat parents, and usually with a shopping cart full of soda pops, gallons o' fruit juices, tubs o' ice creams, econo-bags o' sugar pops cereals, all manner of breads, tortillas, pizzas, 'tater-tots and other assorted carbohydrates. And that's just the day-to-day staples - then there are the "treats": pop-tarts for breakfast (or frozen waffles and sugar syrup), donuts for a morning snack, frozen mini-pizza for the after-school snack, and Ding-Dongs or Twinkies for evening snack with TV... these poor kids don't have a chance!
But that's just my own personal rant - here's the best, most astounding revelation from this whole article, given to us by a doctor, a pediatrician, and professor emeritus (that's edu-speak for really, really big hubba-hubba smart person): "one of the most common causes of overweight in children is overfeeding". Yikes doc, I'd have never guessed! Overfeeding causes obesity - what a concept!
Here's another concept: maybe it is about time we stopped slavishly following our much bally-hoo'd "Food Pyramid" which insists on a high carbohydrate, low fat diet heavy on breads grains and starches, and get back to something healthier, with some protein, and start supplementing our kids and adults with good optimal dose multivitamins to make up the nutritional deficiencies of our modern foods.
Oh, and then we might "just say no" to the demands of the little ones for all that sugary sweet junk, greasy fried potatoes, and other hi-carb treats the same way we would "just say no" if they demanded cocaine...
Just a thought...
Cheers,
Nurse Mark
