Another good way is if you get a chance to look at class pictures. Some elementary schools have the graduating class for each year posted. You can see the difference there as well.
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Childhood Obesity May Be Caused by Missing DNA
- Thread starter Fat Bottom Gurl
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Another good way is if you get a chance to look at class pictures. Some elementary schools have the graduating class for each year posted. You can see the difference there as well.
Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
While the parents are relieved of culpability for their children's morbid obesity, it sounds like the children still have a very real medical problem.
I hope they can get the help they need.
I don't understand why you think there is a contradiction. Say there's a "hunger" gene that makes some people have a stronger desire to eat. Go back 40 years ago in Bangladesh, and I doubt you'll find any obese people because there was not enough food to eat. If you shipped them all to present-day Chicago, give them cars, apartments, and Nintendo, and I would certainly expect those relative differences to appear.
As for the rise in obesity, I see it as a change in lifestyle and availability of inexpensive calories. Take my neighborhood from when I was a kid 30 years ago. I was there for the introduction of the Big Gulp, a 32 ounce soda at 7-11 convenience stores. The three gas stations I could walk to did not have convenience stores. They had soda machines where you could buy 12 ounce cans.
Today, 7-11 has 64 ounce sodas that are cheaper in real dollars than the cans were when I was a kid. The three gas stations also offer sodas, candy, ice cream, and all sorts of foods with a low cost per calorie. That's but one example of increased opportunity.
Lifestyles have changed. When I was coming up, I would see kids playing basketball and other pick-up games nearly every day. Kids would also play games like tag and hide-and-go-seek in yards around the neighborhood. There was lots of bike riding and hanging out with friends (which meant walking). At that time, Atari was just coming on to the scene.
Now video games are far more commonplace. Kids can communicate instantly over the computer and via cell phones. These things suck up a lot of time - time that was formerly spent in physical activity.
In broad terms I think the two combined for the genesis of increases in weight over all, and certainly more opportunity for people to become obese. As a social theory (totally out of my ass), I think that as more and more people put on weight, it became less and less of a social stigma. Vanity and social acceptance, not health, are probably the strongest factors in a person moderating their weight.
A genetic component does not preclude increases in overall obesity rates. The upside to discovering a genetic component is that maybe people will realize that maintaining their weight is more difficult for them than others, so they will accept that and work harder. The downside and more likely result is that it becomes an excuse.
It's sort of like realizing you have a bad temper because your father was an ******* and treated you poorly. If you stop there, you use it as an excuse. What you're supposed to do is realize that your "natural" reaction is not typical, so you should work harder at controlling it.
kellyb
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I dunno. I'm a "normal weight" person, still, even after the reclassification...and both my kids are "normal weight", too.
I guess as a skeptic I find this interesting.
kellyb
Penultimate Amazing
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Sorry. What I meant by posted was in the old analog sense of physically posted up in the building.
I did a quick search. Here's a site with links to a bunch of class pictures from the early '70s. I looked at a handful and didn't see an obese kid in the bunch. There were a few chubby ones in each class and plenty of skinny ones.
http://www.rocketroberts.com/minn/memorytrunk.htm#scrapbook2
Finding recent class pictures is harder, and I have a headache right now, so I didn't find much. However, I think if you just look at this small random sample of photos you can see that the faces in general are thinner and there are more big kids and the biggest are bigger.
http://bw087.k12.sd.us/Images/winterclass3.jpg
http://edublogs.misd.net/mraustin/files/2009/10/P1010005-1024x768.jpg
http://local.aaca.org/siraaca/images/older_than_2008/Deb_s_Class1.jpg
kellyb
Penultimate Amazing
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I'm not seeing evidence of epidemic pathology there. I'm just seeing a bunch of cute kids.
???
One of my hobbies is photography, and I concentrate on shooting people. I have what I consider an above-average eye for spotting things about people (it's a parlor game for me to guess recent ancestry). I think I might be seeing things you don't notice. Below is one of the pictures. There are six kids out of about 25 that I consider as having weight problems (not necessarily obese) - see the red circles. In one case I circled the calf because it's hard to see in his face but it's plain as day on his leg.
In general look at the faces. Can you see cheekbones and jaw lines or is the face kind of soft and round? How about under chin? Are you seeing the start of a double-chin or is the more of a sharp turn leading to a neck that looks like it also is shows muscle rather than a layer of softness?
Check out the arms if they have short sleeves - how does the inside of the elbow look? Is there a delineation or does it all seem to kind of blend together? How about the wrist joints? Do the fingers seem a little chubby? Do the shin bones show or is there fat on the front? Is there a bulge around the belt?
Personally, I see quite a few differences between the old photos and the few new ones I found. Kids that age should have long ago lost their "baby fat" and there's really no reason for them to be carrying noticeable fat. I see a general increase in weight (not necessarily unhealthy but not a good idea in general) and a higher percentage of really big kids.
kellyb
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Can you enlarge that pic?
Coz at least half of the kids you circled as fat look fine to me.
This board has a limit on file sizes. If you click it, though, you should see a larger version. Here's a zoomed in version of a few of the kids.
And here is the kid with the chubby calf. You can kinda see how he's a little plump in his arms and face as well, but the lack of definition in the calf is the biggest clue.
Kellyb, I don't think the kids you circled are nearly as big as any of the kids I circled. By your standards, which is a guess just like mine, I'd have to add a few more.
We're not going to prove it with a few photos anyway. The research is pretty clear that the average weight in children has increase over the years as has the BMI and incidence of obesity.
We're not going to prove it with a few photos anyway. The research is pretty clear that the average weight in children has increase over the years as has the BMI and incidence of obesity.
No way should an 11 year old kid's calf be that big. Also, if you look closely, you can see the crease marks in his neck. Anyway, enough of this. If you get the chance, check for historical class pictures at you child's school where you get a much larger sample size. Just count the number of really big kids from year to year.
Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
Are you really skeptical of the trend towards obesity in the last 40 to 50 years ?
( I'm referring to the USA )
All you have to do is search for ' News Reel ' and similar videos on YouTube, and look at the crowd scenes ..
Pup
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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Some stuff from the CDC:[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm[/FONT]
Edited to add, it's not just that kids are getting taller, either.
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]The average weight for a 10-year-old boy in 1963 was 74.2 pounds; by 2002 the average weight was nearly 85 pounds.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]The average weight for a 10-year-old girl in 1963 was 77.4 pounds; by 2002 the average weight was nearly 88 pounds.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]A 15-year-old boy weighed 135.5 pounds on average in 1966; by 2002 the average weight of a boy that age increased to 150.3 pounds.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]A 15-year-old girl weighed 124.2 pounds on average in 1966; by 2002 the average weight for a girl that age was 134.4 pounds.[/FONT][/FONT]
Edited to add, it's not just that kids are getting taller, either.
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]In 1963, the average BMI for a 7-year-old boy was 15.9; in 2002 it was 17.0. For girls the same age, the average BMI increased from 15.8 to 16.6 over the same period.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]In 1966, the average BMI for a 16-year-old boy was 21.3; in 2002, it was 24.1. For girls the same age, the average BMI increased from 21.9 to 24.0 over the same period.[/FONT]
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kellyb
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That's one point. Plus you have to correct for a decreasing prevalence of malnourished, underweight kids during that time period.
But either way, my position is not that the childhood obesity epidemic is completely fictitious, but rather just that the actual change in the incidence of obesity in kids over the past few decades has been vastly overblown by the media.
kellyb
Penultimate Amazing
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On the genetic factor:
http://mcdb.colorado.edu/courses/4410/papers/fried_rev04.pdf
And a good JFS post on the issue:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html
http://mcdb.colorado.edu/courses/4410/papers/fried_rev04.pdf
And a good JFS post on the issue:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html
Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
I think the media is pretty much ignoring it... So I'm not sure where you are coming from ..
It may have something to do with your age, and your perspective from when you grew up .. If you haven't lived through the change, perhaps the overweight kids look normal to you ..
I grew up in the 50's and 60's.. There may have been one or two fat kids in a class .. They were never poor . They were the ones who had extra money to by twinkies and such at the corner grocery ..
My wife is an elementary teacher in a poor neighborhood, and I am frequently at her school. The lines of students as they move through the halls, look like they are on their way to a Teletubby convention ..
I see their parents in the grocery stores with carts full of flavored sugar water, sugary cereals and Pop Tarts .. ( they think the " Contains Real Fruit " on the label means they must be nutritious )
There are a lot of fat kids out there .. I fail to comprehend why anyone cannot be aware of this.
It may have something to do with your age, and your perspective from when you grew up .. If you haven't lived through the change, perhaps the overweight kids look normal to you ..
I grew up in the 50's and 60's.. There may have been one or two fat kids in a class .. They were never poor . They were the ones who had extra money to by twinkies and such at the corner grocery ..
My wife is an elementary teacher in a poor neighborhood, and I am frequently at her school. The lines of students as they move through the halls, look like they are on their way to a Teletubby convention ..
I see their parents in the grocery stores with carts full of flavored sugar water, sugary cereals and Pop Tarts .. ( they think the " Contains Real Fruit " on the label means they must be nutritious )
There are a lot of fat kids out there .. I fail to comprehend why anyone cannot be aware of this.