Becoming a nation of Baby Hueys
AS MUCH AS obesity is in the news, Ohio State University public health epidemiologist Sarah Anderson was still surprised how it now assaults the youngest children. Studying 8,550 children, she and Robert Whitaker of Temple University found that 18.4 percent of 4-year-olds, nearly one-in-five, were obese, including 31.2 percent American Indians and Native Alaskans.
"While research has shown differences in older children and men and women, we didn't necessarily think we'd find that large of a difference in young children," Anderson said in a telephone interview. "But the fact they have such a high BMI (body mass index) and they're 4? This clearly shows that we have a problem early in childhood and that we really need to think about childhood obesity prevention that begins in infancy, perhaps even in pregnancy."
The study in the current Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine should set off a national alarm. We already know that fat youth inexorably blow up into fatally immobile adults. In 2003-2006 data, the Centers for Disease Control said 12.4 percent of children ages 2 to 5 were obese. Adult America is 34 percent obese.
Based on that, 20 percent obesity rates at age 4 will produce 55 percent obesity rates in adulthood. Already among those ages 40-59, 40 percent of all men, 51 percent of Mexican-American women and 53 percent of African-American women are obese. African-American female obesity continues to 61 percent after the age of 60.
The surgeon general's office says 300,000 deaths may be annually attributable to obesity. So far, America has responded with morsels of concern as our children are swallowed whole by fast food, junk snacks, and eternal, sedentary screen time. For instance, the nation spends $15 billion a year for child nutrition programs and $20 billion in the stimulus went to nutrition assistance. President Obama proposes in FY2010 an additional $1 billion a year to enhance "the nutritional quality of school meals, expanding nutrition research and evaluation, and improving program oversight."
Oversight means nothing if you are overseeing the most tragic slow-motion American disaster since smoking. Federal nutrition programs are a feeble whisper against the howling scream of trash food marketing. The Federal Trade Commission last year reported that 44 top food and beverage companies spent nearly $10 billion in 2006 on general marketing, of which $1.6 billion directly targeted to youth. Soda, fast food, and cereals account for nearly two-thirds of youth marketing.
Study after study shows obesity to be fueled by child exposure to ads, proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools, and the overabundance of bad food at rural and inner-city convenience stores, in lives devoid of exercise. Voluntary marketing limits enacted by trash-food makers are the wink of wolves. Jon Leibowitz, who was elevated last month to FTC chairman by Obama, said the marketing of sugary carbonated beverages amounts to $20 for each American youth. "The marketing efforts must be working," Leibowitz wrote. "Adolescents get 11 percent of their calories from soft drinks."
Before youth get any more calories from soda, and before we become a nation of Baby Hueys, Obama and Congress should, with an urgency second only to the oncoming regulation of tobacco, enact emergency federal rules to ban trash-food marketing to youth. This means not just kicking vending machines out of schools, but ending the insidious practice where soda and fast-food companies buy off school districts to become educational and sports program sponsors. It means ending many cross-promotional tie-ins on toys and clever media product placement. It also means the White House banning sugar and fat companies from its own exercise initiatives. The President's Challenge on physical fitness lists Coke, Burger King, Hershey's,
Four decades ago, Mary Poppins cheerfully sang that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Today, sugar is the grim reaper as children down 12-ounce sodas with the equivalent of 10-to-12 teaspoons of sugar. With infants literally blowing up, we need Mary Poppins back to sing sugarcalifragilisticexpialidocious. The sight of our babies is simply quite atrocious.
Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com. 
