Childhood Obesity (Part 1 of 2)

In 1963, 4 - 5% of people between the ages of 6 and 19 were considered obese.

In 2002, 16% of that population was obese.

In 2010, 32% of the people in that age range are obese.

32%.

One in three.

Obese. Not just "overweight", but OBESE.

Obesity in children has tripled since 1980.

Childhood obesity has become an epidemic, and medical experts, parents and school officials are blaming the food industry in general and the soft drink industry in particular for this problem. These folks are saying that the sugary snacks and beverages that our kids are consuming are making them fat and killing them.

According to these people, the sugar purveyors of the world are getting rich by making our kids fat, and they are doing so with advertizing that targets children.

Interesting, but to tell you the truth, something just doesn't seem right to me about this. I know I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and far be it from me to wantonly disregard the opinions of "the experts", but I've got a problem with this.

Maybe you can read this two-part article and then enlighten me.

You see, when I was a kid, we had sugar. Lots of it. I remember eating sugar cubes right out of the sugar bowl.

We kids would wake up in the morning and drink orange juice from concentrate, and then for breakfast we would eat Sugar Smacks or Sugar Frosted Flakes or Sugar Pops or Pop Tarts or pancakes with maple syrup. Then we'd head off to school with lunchboxes or brown paper bags containing the lunch that our moms made for us.

My school lunch usually consisted of a sandwich made from processed meat and/or cheese on white bread, a piece of fruit, a thermos of milk and a package of Hostess Cupcakes, Twinkies or Ring Dings.

At suppertime, we all ate together as a family. When supper was finished, we children could not get up from the table until our parents excused us. However, before that happened, at the end of the meal we always had dessert. ALWAYS!

My mother always made sure that there were homemade cakes or pies or brownies or fudge in the house. ALWAYS!

There was a cabinet in the pantry (Pantry??? Yeah, "pantry". Look it up.) that was filled with cookies and crackers. There was a drawer in the kitchen that was always full of candy bars (Milky Ways, Snickers, Pay Days, Bolster Bars, Kit-Kats, etc.), and only on occasion were we children told that we should abstain.

In school, there was candy counter that sold candy, cookies and soda to us.

When there were parties at school, moms always brought in all kinds of sugary baked goods for us to consume.

There was also fast food back then too. The McDonald's Restaurant Foundation came into being in 1955, and our parents and older siblings who had their licenses would drive us to The Golden Arches to get fries and milkshakes and burgers.

There was also soda back in those days too. Coca-cola came into being in the 1800's (first as a medicine containing cocaine, and later as a fountain drink), and in the late f1950's and early 1960's, everybody was taking The Pause That Refreshes.

And food marketing aimed at children is not an invention of the 21^st Century. We as children in the 50's and 60'swere barraged by it with such animated personalities as Tony The Tiger, Ronald McDonald, Sugar Pops Pete, Cap'n Crunch, and a myriad of other lovable folks who were bent on selling us their high-in-fructose-syrup wares!

And yet, with all of that sugar flowing through our veins, the obesity rate in children in 1963 was 4 -5%.

WTF?

(To Be Continued)