Childhood Obesity

This letter is written in response to the article "Panel urges obesity tests for kids as young as 6" by Kelly Brewington (Jan. 18). Ms. Brewington has done a thorough review of this topic, and we applaud the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for calling attention to this alarming trend, a trend that has significant impact beyond just the weight of our community. Research is clear that poor nutrition and physical inactivity has broad reaching consequences. America's childhood obesity rates have tripled in the last 30 years, exposing 9 million kids to a variety of potential long-term health consequences.

As physicians who treat overweight children in Maryland daily, we strongly support the views expressed by Horizon Foundation CEO Nikki Highsmith Vernick in her recent commentary on childhood obesity ("A healthier way to snack," May 15). We urge parents to speak with their pediatricians about healthy food and beverage options for their children. We further suggest that parents advocate for their child's school to provide healthy alternatives to sugary foods and beverages that are often found in vending machines and school cafeterias.

As physicians who treat overweight children in Maryland daily, we strongly support the views expressed by Horizon Foundation CEO Nikki Highsmith Vernick in her recent commentary on childhood obesity ("A healthier way to snack," May 15). We urge parents to speak with their pediatricians about healthy food and beverage options for their children. We further suggest that parents advocate for their child's school to provide healthy alternatives to sugary foods and beverages that are often found in vending machines and school cafeterias.

Growing up in Texas, I played softball - fast pitch. After playing in the hot Texas sun, our team, the Sweetpeas, had a snack of oranges and water, in containers brought from home. Today, my husband and I are new Howard County residents, and we have gotten our children, ages 6 and 4, involved in sports activities, beginning with T-ball. We have been struck by the well-groomed baseball fields and the engaged volunteer parents. We were impressed with it all - until the post-game snacks came out. Over the last three weeks, these snacks have included chips, fruit roll-ups, sugary rice treats, chocolate-covered doughnuts with rainbow sprinkles, assorted fruit punch, and sports drinks.

Jay Perman feels a touch ashamed now of the thoughts he had when he first started seeing droplets of fat in the livers of adolescent patients. Like any person on the street might, the pediatrician believed these hefty kids simply needed to stop gorging themselves on fried foods and sweets. He had yet to grasp the big picture. Decades later, as the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Perman has an entirely different take on childhood obesity. He regards it as the leading pediatric health challenge of our time, an endlessly complicated tangle of social, economic and medical problems with the potential for devastating, nation-changing effects.

A recent Harvard School of Public Health study indicated that potatoes, especially chips or fries, but even boiled ones, contribute more to weight gain than other foods. But rather than putting the question to rest, the finding prompted the U.S. Potato Board to provide the public with precisely the opposite advice: "There is no evidence that potatoes, when prepared in a healthful manner, contribute to weight gain. … In fact, they are one of the most naturally nutrient dense vegetables available.

Growing up in Texas, I played softball - fast pitch. After playing in the hot Texas sun, our team, the Sweetpeas, had a snack of oranges and water, in containers brought from home. Today, my husband and I are new Howard County residents, and we have gotten our children, ages 6 and 4, involved in sports activities, beginning with T-ball. We have been struck by the well-groomed baseball fields and the engaged volunteer parents. We were impressed with it all - until the post-game snacks came out. Over the last three weeks, these snacks have included chips, fruit roll-ups, sugary rice treats, chocolate-covered doughnuts with rainbow sprinkles, assorted fruit punch, and sports drinks.

For me, it was the last straw. As a physician, I've worried for years about how common obesity and diet-related diseases are becoming among our nation's young people. But I was absolutely floored by the American Academy of Pediatrics' recent recommendation that children as young as 8 should be prescribed cholesterol-lowering medication when lifestyle changes don't seem to help. Second-graders on Lipitor? That recommendation has raised concerns about the effects these powerful drugs might have on developing young bodies.

The usual stars of the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore — the wild cats, hulking elephants and graceful cranes whose habitats are re-created on the grounds — lost some of the spotlight Tuesday to the players, cheerleaders and mascot of the Baltimore Ravens, as the team and zoo played host to about 120 local schoolchildren for an annual community service event. Tuesday was the NFL/United Way's annual "Hometown Huddle," a leaguewide day of service, which this year is focused on combating childhood obesity by getting kids to be more active.

Jay Perman preaches the gospel of nice. Employees follow the incoming president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore from job to job because they so enjoy working with him. Medical students at the University of Kentucky remember their pleasant shock at hearing the dean say they couldn't be good doctors if they weren't good people first. "I wear it as a badge of honor," says Perman, who began his new job Thursday. "There's not enough nice in health care. Nice is what the public demands."

The children's novel "The Adventures of M.T. Pitt" is helping Howard County promote healthy lifestyles for youths. The book shines a light on an imaginative young boy whose expanding girth makes him a target for the school bully. The Howard County Health Department has published 5,000 copies of the paperback, at a cost of about $9,000, and is offering complimentary copies at its six area libraries. Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, county health officer, wrote in the book's foreword that "childhood obesity stands as the central health challenge of our time.

Jay Perman feels a touch ashamed now of the thoughts he had when he first started seeing droplets of fat in the livers of adolescent patients. Like any person on the street might, the pediatrician believed these hefty kids simply needed to stop gorging themselves on fried foods and sweets. He had yet to grasp the big picture. Decades later, as the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Perman has an entirely different take on childhood obesity. He regards it as the leading pediatric health challenge of our time, an endlessly complicated tangle of social, economic and medical problems with the potential for devastating, nation-changing effects.

A recent Harvard School of Public Health study indicated that potatoes, especially chips or fries, but even boiled ones, contribute more to weight gain than other foods. But rather than putting the question to rest, the finding prompted the U.S. Potato Board to provide the public with precisely the opposite advice: "There is no evidence that potatoes, when prepared in a healthful manner, contribute to weight gain. … In fact, they are one of the most naturally nutrient dense vegetables available.

In a July 13 opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a pediatrician and a lawyer from Harvard suggest that child-protective services take severely overweight children away from negligent parents. I do think this question should be part of the public debate on childhood obesity. However, obesity is only one of the many childhood miseries that may be attributable to parental behavior. Restricting ourselves to only medical problems, consider the asthmatic child whose parents smoke cigarettes in the home; the child with food allergies whose parents don't manage to provide an allergen-free diet; the family that chooses to keep a dog in the house after the dog has bitten a child; parents who don't give required medications; parents who don't comply with their own mental health therapies and expose children to excessive stress and emotional trauma; and parents who expose children to domestic violence because they cannot control their own behavior.

For six months, fourth-grader Meghan Junis jogged a half-mile here, a quarter-mile there as she gradually put together the pieces of a marathon. On Saturday, the 10-year-old student at Cromwell Valley Elementary in Towson ran the final mile of a 26.2-mile trek at Polytechnic Institute and Western High School in Baltimore, where several hundred children also completed the last leg in a steady drizzle. "It's hard, but you could do it. You have to push forward," Meghan said as she held a medal for her accomplishment.

The Baltimore City Council's education committee assembled school officials, the health commissioner and fitness advocates on Thursday to discuss a trend emerging in city schools: While students are meeting state standards in their physical education requirements, they're also getting fatter. During a committee hearing at City Hall, city and school leaders explored ways that the school system could strengthen its current standards of physical activity and health instruction to combat the growing trend of childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes, which half of the city's students born after the year 2000 are at risk for. "This is so important in the lives of our children, who are dying before their parents," said City Councilwoman Agnes Welch, a longtime advocate of combating childhood obesity.

In the farthest corner of the playground at Sandymount Elementary School in Finksburg, the fifth-graders are in the midst of a soccer game. They're running and pushing, falling and getting up again. They hit the ball with everything they have available - heads, knees, shoulders, elbows. They don't keep score, but that's not the point. They have only 15 minutes, and they're trying to make the most of it. For some youngsters, it's a chance to practice for a community soccer league game that day. But for many, those 15 minutes are the only opportunity for physical activity during the school day. In a growing number of elementary schools, even those 15 minutes of playtime are threatened.

Baltimore should improve access to fresh produce and recreational activities in low-income neighborhoods to stem childhood obesity, according to a City Council task force report released yesterday. "This is more serious than smoking," said City Councilwoman Agnes Welch, who has overseen the issue in the council. "Let this be a movement: We're going to stop childhood obesity in the city of Baltimore."

The usual stars of the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore — the wild cats, hulking elephants and graceful cranes whose habitats are re-created on the grounds — lost some of the spotlight Tuesday to the players, cheerleaders and mascot of the Baltimore Ravens, as the team and zoo played host to about 120 local schoolchildren for an annual community service event. Tuesday was the NFL/United Way's annual "Hometown Huddle," a leaguewide day of service, which this year is focused on combating childhood obesity by getting kids to be more active.

It comes to us from The New York Times that it is no longer necessary to change the oil in your automobile's engine every 3,000 miles. Cars manufactured in the last half dozen years can go 7,500, or even 10,000 miles, under most driving conditions before an oil change, Alina Tugend wrote earlier this week in the Times. I am sure this comes as a complete shock to you, as it did to me. I have been preaching the 3,000-mile doctrine, which I learned at my father's knee, to my husband and children for all these years, and now I realize they have been right to consider me compulsive and controlling, and I have been wrong to think of them as careless abusers of expensive machines.