CDC Issues Diabetes Warning for Children
CDC: 1 in 3 Children Born in 2000 Will Become Diabetic Unless Habits Change


The article talks about the increase in children suffering from type 2 diabetes which at one time was concidered an adult disease. The article does mention that losing weight can help lower the risk for diabetes. You think instead of just warning that children will develop diabetes the CDC would start recomending a reduction of sugars in childrens diets and maybe give thier sacred pyramid a closer look.

It would be great if they would also review the school lunch program. Ketchup is not a vegetable, I don't care what Reagan said. From what I remember of school lunches you got a small samwich or something, then kids could choose if they wanted more. On the side, white bread and margerine.

Article is located at: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Living/ap20030614_597.html

YOu know, school lunches is one of the places I really "learned" my bad eating habits. Hot lunches consisted of french fries at least 3 of 5 days a week at my schools! Nothing healthier than that sandwich and french fries 3 times a week served with a sugary fruit juice(which was only like 30% juice). In high school we did have better options, however it was an OPTION. And how many high school kids do you know that are going to go to the salad bar line? Instead most of us went for the "sandwich and fries" line where we could get a sandwich and fries EVERY DAY. While I don't think it's the governments job to be deciding our children's diets for them....I think government schools make it difficult on parents by providing such meals that are HORRIBLE for children, often with little alternatives.

It makes me so sad that Dr A didnt live to write dia-besity, as he had planned.
The health risks of being overweight and inactive require us to demand of these politicians that a national health campaign be implemented.
I was lucky and played sports growing up so eating crap didnt effect me. But now kids just watch TV and play video games with no conception of what being inactive does to you. The people who market the crappy food to kids need to go to jail, unfortunately they make such a profit that they also put politicians in office.
Remember Jimmy Carter did that fitness campaign that made all kids take a test? Now things are reaching skyrocketing proportions, and no one does anything? I dont blame politicians for coming up with weak answers like the 'fat tax', because no one is addressing this on a national scale. We need to do something!

Yeah, whatever happened to that?

I remember as a kid in both junior and high school, there was constant fitness evaluations. Running the 6 minute mile, doing as many pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups etc....as humanely possible in 60 seconds; and constantly doing wind sprints running the 100 & 50 yeard sprints. Then, some sports everyday.

Don't they still do that? They should.

They still do that in my area. However, you only are required ONE physical education class in high school. So you do that once, usually your freshman year in high school and then spend the rest with no exercise(for a majority of kids). I believe physical education(and studies would agree) increases students ability and willingness to learn simply because you do FEEL better after exercising. I think it would be benificial to all to mandate PE every year in school.

High school gym was a joke here. The jocks got automatic A's because "They play sports so are already getting physical activity." Most of the other people sat on the sidelines or walked. Even trying your best you could only get a B if not in sports. We did the presidents test, those who did well enough got a certificate and that was that.

Elementary and middle school are just as bad now. The kids stand in line waiting their turn to kick a ball and not much more

School Lunches are nutritionally worthless. They are so focused on lowering fat that they've gone to using lots of bread and sugar. They served eggs at breakfast up until about 1990. After that, they replaced them with Fruit Loops (Sugary Cereal) and Bread. Now, there's a way to start off the day: load 'em up with sugar and starch...and they wonder why children can't focus in class. Lunch was never anything decent. The meats never tasted like what they were supposed to be. The chicken nuggets bounced when you dropped them on the floor and everything was fried except when they had Hamburger, Pizza, or Pasta...French Fries or Mashed Potatoes and overcooked spinach which you had to take, but never ate were the sides. As for the salad bar...we had that when I was in 3rd grade. I loved it. More accurately, it was about the only thing that tasted like real food. Then again, that was back when I ate lots of vegetables at dinner at home. They dropped the salad bar after that year...and never brought it back. I personally believe that childhood obesity can be to some degree reversed simply by improving school food:

1) Meats should not be fried;
2) Replace the overcooked spinach with a salad;
3) Replace Juice Bars with FRESH low-glycemic Fruit;
4) Replace French Fries with FRESH Green vegetables;
5) Bring back the damned salad bar; and
6) Get rid of the soda/snack machines.

As for PE...it was good in Elementary School. But, in Middle School they made us change into uniforms in the locker room...With ZERO supervision, the jocks would routinely harrass and beat up the outcasts (such as myself). I managed to get my mother to write something to get me out of PE...because I got beat up everyday in the locker room. If they are going to require you to change in the locker room...there should at least be some adult supervision to prevent this sort of thing.

High School was better...in that I didn't get beat up everyday. But, it also wasn't really PE. We only had PE for 1 semester (not even a full year) and we only spent half that time exercising. The other half of the time, was spent learning that carbs were our friend and fat was our enemy. The second semester we had Health which went back over that same crap, and added to it why smoking a joint will cause you to go nuts, that if you have pre-marital sex...you will get a VD/STD, etc...We barely did any exercise of value in HS PE. Most of the time was spent indoctrinating us to eat low-fat, not do drugs, and abstain from sex.

As for the exercise days...we had those in Elementary School. I always did well in them, but I was skinny in Elementary School. I won the mile run in 3rd grade. I always won the sprints. Chin ups were no problem. But, at the time...I wasn't eating alot of carbs and I was in good shape. That didn't change too much until 6th/7th grades.

We had recess in Elementary School...and we always got plenty of exercise. In Kindergarten, we ran around alot. In 1st and 2nd grades we played lots of Baseball. In fact, after school I would go down to the Boy's Club and play roller hockey (hockey on roller skates). In 3rd grade we played alot of kickball. In 4th and 5th we played alot of Football and Baketball at recess. In the first half of 6th grade...even though we didn't specifically have recess, we could go outside and play sports after we finished eating. That ended when some kid broke his head open on the basketball court. No more going outside and getting exercise after lunch. We could still show up early and use the basketball, etc...courts. But, most kids did not want to get to school early.

Forcing kids to run wind sprints a few times doesn't solve anything. You need to get them interested in exercising...and that means sports: Basketball, Football, Kickball, Dodgeball (with kickballs, not tennis balls...as they really hurt), Baseball, Volleyball, and Soccer. We shouldn't leave the ability to play sports at school to just those few who make the team. PE should give the kids options...something that is exercise, but they like to do. I.E. sports of their chosing.

They also started cutting down on recesses and break time. One school in Atlanta I belive it was, was actuly constructed without a playground. The reasoning was the children would get enough physical activity in PE class and recess took away from core class time.

Children are not meant to sit for 6 hours or more at a desk and expect to pay attention. They feed them crud, demand they not move, then medicate them when they can't take it. I know there are good schools out there and this is the extream, but it seems too far extream to me. Common sense just went out the window.

Recess is where most of a childs physical activity comes from. It is also where they learn sharing, taking turns, good sportsmanship, and alot of other skills that PE is suposed to teach, but seems to fail at.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,89428,00.html

CDC: One Third of Kids Born in 2000 at Risk for Diabetes Unless Habits Change







Saturday, June 14, 2003

NEW ORLEANS — One in three U.S. children born in 2000 will become diabetic unless many more people start eating less and exercising more, a scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (search) warns.





The odds are worse for black and Hispanic children: nearly half of them are likely to develop the disease, said Dr. K.M. Venkat Narayan, a diabetes epidemiologist at the CDC.

"I think the fact that the diabetes epidemic has been raging has been well known to us for several years. But looking at the risk in these terms was very shocking to us," Narayan said.

The 33 percent lifetime risk is about triple the American Diabetes Association's (search) current estimate.

The implications are frightening. Diabetes (search) leads to a host of problems, including blindness, kidney failure, amputation and heart disease, and diabetics are getting younger and younger.

Including undiagnosed cases, authorities believe about 17 million Americans, nearly 6 percent of the U.S. population, have diabetes today.

If the CDC predictions are accurate, some 45 million to 50 million U.S. residents could have diabetes by 2050, said Dr. Kevin McKinney, director of the adult clinical endocrinological unit at the University of Texas Medical Center in Galveston.

"There is no way that the medical community could keep up with that," he said.

McKinney, who was not part of the study, said Narayan's procedures are valid and the estimates, being presented Saturday to the American Diabetes Association, are probably all too likely.

Diabetes, a disease caused largely by obesity and lack of exercise, has been an increasing worry for decades. From the mid-1960s to the mid-'90s, the number of cases tripled.

The number of diagnosed cases rose by nearly half in just the past 10 years, hitting 11 million in 2000, and is expected to rise an additional 165 percent by 2050, to 29 million, an earlier CDC study by Narayan and others found.

"These estimates I am giving you now are probably quite conservative," Narayan said in an interview before the diabetes association's annual scientific meeting here.

Narayan said it would be difficult to say whether undiagnosed cases would rise at the same rate. If they did, that could push the 2050 figure to 40 million or more.

Doctors had known for some time that Type 2 diabetes (search) — what used to be called adult-onset diabetes because it typically showed up in middle-aged people — is on the rise, and that patients are getting younger.

Nobody else had crunched the numbers to look at current odds of getting the disease, Narayan said.

Overall, he said, 39 percent of the girls who now are healthy 2- to 3-year-olds and 33 percent of the boys are likely to develop diabetes, he said.

For Hispanic children, the odds are closer to one in two: 53 percent of the girls and 45 percent of the boys. The numbers are about 49 percent and 40 percent for black girls and boys, and 31 percent and 27 percent for white girls and boys.

To reach his estimates, Narayan used data from the annual National Health Interview Survey of about 360,000 people from 1984-2000, from the U.S. Census Bureau and from a previous study of diabetes as a cause of death.

Globally, the World Health Organization has estimated that by 2025, the number of people with diabetes worldwide will more than double, from 140 million to 300 million.

"They estimated that by 2025, there would be close to 60 million people with diabetes in India alone. That's about the size of Great Britain or France," Narayan said.

It doesn't have to happen.

Type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed by losing weight, exercising and following a sensible diet.

A study two years ago found that walking 30 minutes a day most days of the week and losing a little weight helped the people most likely to get it cut their risk 58 percent.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (search) used that information last fall in its "Small Steps, Big Rewards" (search) campaign against diabetes.

no mention of carbohydrates....when will they "get it"

LadyBelle,

--------------------------------------------
You think instead of just warning that children will develop
diabetes the CDC would start recomending a reduction of sugars in childrens diets and maybe
give thier sacred pyramid a closer look.
--------------------------------------------

The premise of your statement is that the CDC actually wants people to be healthy. I think that premise is seriously flawed. These folks benefit from public sickness. Don't look for "diet reform" any time soon. They know that processed carbs and trans fats cause problems. That's why they push them so much. Actually, you should get ready for "fat taxes" and more intrusion into YOUR life. They're going to save you from "Big meat", "Big dairy" and "Big eggs". After all, according to the "experts" they're killing you. Enjoy.

I must interject something. My sister and I were looking through some of my grandmother's stuff about two months ago. She had a box full of old pictures. There was one of great interest with respect to this thread. It was a photograph of my mother's 6th grade class in 1955. I counted 24 children and not a single one was fat. Not ONE. The school was in Panama City, Florida. They were Southerners and my grandmother put bacon grease in just about everything she cooked. Yes, they were more active. But, I think the picture speaks volumes.

Unfortunately...its getting less and less extreme with every passing day. The government is always complaining that kids don't get enough exercise. They need to take a long, hard look at their own actions before they blame everyone else. They're not only making it hard for the kids to get exercise...they are in some cases actually rewarding students for not exercising.

There is/was a program called Book It...Don't know if it is still around or not. On the face it sounds like a good idea: reward kids for reading. But, in reality what happens is that they give away free pizza to kids who spend the summer reading books instead of going outside and getting some exercise.

The schools are discouraging exercise and rewarding good students with pizza and other fattening foods. Ever wonder why the smartest kids seem to be the fattest...its programs like this that reward them (with food) for not exercising.

don't loose your focus. Kids are overweight today largely in part to too much TV, Nintendo, internet. Little or no physical activity or extremely sedentary lifestyle. Percentage of diet coming from sugar is not the culprit. Is the total amount of not only sugar but of fat and more importantly, of calories. For a sedentary lifestyle you cannot consume what this kids consume.
Fries and not healthy in any diet. Not just a low carb one. Low carb is needs further research before we start recommending for children. Their dietary needs are different. Children need to monitor CALORIC intake and increase physical activity and limit sedentary.
Don't go overboard and start blaming children obesity on too much carbs alone. It is not that simple of a problem.

don't get tunnel vision.
Obesity in children is more than just too many carbs!
MAIN PROBLEM IS SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE AND TOO MANY CALORIES TO GO WITH THAT LIFESTYLE.
Children as well as Adults, eat too many calories and live sedentary lives. Even if you exercise an hour a day but spent the rest of your time sitting...you could still have a sedentary lifestyle.