Super-Sizing Insanity
It’s no secret that American children and teens are struggling with their weight. As of 2008, 1/3 of all children and teens were classified as either overweight (85% – 95% BMI – Body Mass Index – weight adjusted for height or BMI - based on their age and gender), or obese (95%+).
Super-sizing Children and Teens
One particularly disturbing recent trend was reported last week by Kaiser Permanente, the large Health Maintenance Organization based in California, in a study published in the journal Pediatrics. According to Kaiser, more kids are graduating from the “obese” category to “extremely obese.” Based on the study, Kaiser estimates that 6.4% of children and teens are now “extremely obese.” The CDC defines extreme obesity as having a BMI 20% higher than the 95th percentile BMI.
The Kaiser study drew from the electronic medical records of 710,949 patients ages 2 to 19 years old enrolled in 2007-2008 in Kaiser health programs in Southern California. About 7.3 percent of boys and 5.5 percent of girls were extremely obese, translating to about 560,000 children and adolescents in California. For a 10-year-old girl who is 4 feet 6 inches tall, extreme obesity starts at 129 pounds, according to Kaiser. For an 18- year-old boy who is about 5 feet 10 inches, 272 pounds is classified as extremely obese.
Extremely obese children develop heart and other deadly diseases at a rate much higher than the already elevated levels of obese children, including increased rates of hypertension, high cholesterol and elevated liver enzymes. “Without major lifestyle changes, these kids face a 10-to- 20-years shorter life span and will develop health problems in their 20s that we typically see in 40-60 year olds,” one of the Kaiser researchers said in a statement.
Super-sizing on Purpose – A Mom Striving to Become the First Half Ton Mom
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a 600 lb. woman received a great deal of media attention by announcing that she wants to weigh 1,000 lbs. within the next two years. Yes, Donna Simpson of New Jersey has a goal: to become the world’s heaviest woman.
The 42-year-old Donna already holds the Guinness World Record as the world’s heaviest mother (530 lbs.). She needed a team of 30 medical personnel to deliver her daughter Jacqueline during a high-risk Caesarean birth. When asked whether pursuing this goal might conflict with her desire to be a good parent, Donna agreed: “It might be hard [to achieve this goal]. Running after my daughter keeps my weight down.”
To achieve her goal, Donna says she will need to eat up to 12,000 calories a day. And to fund her $750 weekly grocery bill, she runs a Web site where men pay her to watch her eat fast food.
Donna says she loves eating, and people love watching her eat: “It makes people happy, and I’m not harming anyone.”
Really?
Super-sizing the World’s Most Famous Supper
In this March 16, 2010 photo provided by Cornell University, Prof. Brian Wansink, holds a plate illustrating how food portion size has grown over the centuries, in front of a projection of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.. The food in famous paintings of the Last Supper has grown by biblical proportions over the last millennium, researchers report in a medical journal Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
(AP Photo/Cornell University, Jason Koski)
Speaking of big and getting bigger, the brilliant Cornell University researcher Brian Wansink, shown in the photo above and renowned at Wellspring for his “bottomless bowl of tomato soup” and “stale popcorn” studies, has done it again in a study published in the International Journal of Obesity. Professor Wansink and his team examined 52 of the most famous paintings of the Last Supper over the past 1,000 years, paying particular attention to portion sizes. They found that the main courses, bread and plates put before Jesus and his disciples have progressively grown by up to two-thirds.
“The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food,” said Dr. Wansink. “We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner.”The main meals grew 69% and plate size 66% between the oldest and most recent paintings. Bread size grew by about 23%. The sharpest increases were seen in paintings completed after the year 1500.
On Being Sane in Insane Places
These stories clearly illustrate a point we emphasize with Wellspring’s campers, students and families (see www.wellspringweightloss.com). When weight controllers embrace the changes in behaviors and attitudes necessary for effective long-term weight loss, they must face the insanity all around them very directly – and learn how to master it. Asking children and teens to become sane in an apparently insane world is asking a lot. Professionally conducted programs like Wellspring provide the modeling, education, training and support that can arm young weight controllers for this remarkable challenge. Without these tools in place, most young weight controllers get swept along in a culture heading in a very unfortunate direction.
