Obesity rate triples for boys
Tom Arnold, National Post, Monday 27 November, 2000
New Canadian research has found that obesity nearly tripled for boys over a 15-year span and more than doubled for girls.
The findings are considered alarming and significant, particularly since overweight children tend to become obese adults, who are much more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and heart disease.
The figures indicate the problem is even more acute in Canada than in the United States, where obesity among children is one of the most critical health problems.
Although poor eating habits are part of the problem, physical inactivity -- abetted by television remote controls, computers and video games like Nintendo's GameBoy and Sony's PlayStation -- is at the core of the rising obesity rates, the study concluded.
Lead author Dr. Mark Tremblay of the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy in Fredericton refers to today's children as "the first full Nintendo generation."
"This a major risk factor for most of the chronic diseases that we're dying from today and I think that's pretty damn significant," Dr. Tremblay said. "I am hoping that people pay attention because it is scary."
The findings will be published in tomorrow's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
"Kids have no idea that physical activity needs to be an inherent part of their lifestyle for them to remain healthy," he said. "Parents also have an enormous role to play and we're lousy role models because we're all fat and lazy too. I am generalizing, of course, but the Canadian population is ballooning in terms of obesity."
Dr. Tremblay completed the research with Douglas Willms, director of the research institute. They compared data on children's body mass index -- the ratio of weight to height used to figure out how much a person should weigh -- from studies conducted in 1981, 1988 and 1996.
They found that the prevalence of obesity in boys aged 7 to 13 jumped from 5% in 1981 to 13.5% in 1996. Among girls aged 7 to 13, the obesity figure climbed from 5% in 1981 to 11.8% in 1996.
The numbers of overweight children also rose significantly. The researchers found almost 30% of boys and 24% of girls were overweight, compared to 15% for each sex in 1981.
"Clearly the dramatic increase in the prevalence of obesity in Canadian children represents a serious threat to public health," concludes Dr. Ross Anderson of the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in an accompanying commentary for the journal.
Childhood obesity is the leading cause of pediatric hypertension, is associated with Type II diabetes mellitus, increases the risk of coronary heart disease, increases stress on the weight-bearing joints, lowers self-esteem and affects relationships with peers.
The trend toward an increasing number of fat kids continues, said Dr. Tremblay.
"It's going to get worse before they get better. It means a very scary future for our health care system."
More money is needed to encourage calorie burning among kids, such as expanded physical education programs in schools and other after-school activities, new health promotion plans and disease prevention initiatives, he said.
"Parents had a reasonable amount of physical activity that was a part of daily living, whether it was walking, carrying, chopping, shoveling or mowing. But our kids today have hardly seen that. They have never been without a remote control."
In 1998, the federal government and the provinces signed an agreement to attempt to reduce physical inactivity by 10% across the country over a five-year period. "We're halfway through the five-year goal and nothing has been done," he said.
In another related article, Dr. Peter Katzmarzyk, an epidemiologist at the School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at York University, concluded that physical inactivity cost Canada about $2.1-billion in 1999. He found that if physical inactivity were reduced by 10%, the health care system would save $150-million annually.
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