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"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has scheduled a summit on Sept. 15 in Sacramento."
Despite alarms over childhood obesity, California's kids are packing
on the pounds
- Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Thursday,
August 25, 2005
The message doesn't seem to be clicking with California schoolkids.
Despite
all the studies and media coverage of the so-called obesity epidemic, youngsters are as fat as ever and getting fatter, according
to a report issued Wednesday by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, a nonprofit group in Davis. And that, says
the group, is setting up a big public health crisis if something isn't done.
Fitness-test scores in the public schools
showed that about 28 of every 100 schoolchildren in California were overweight in 2004, up 6 percent from 2001, when a similar
study was done.
"Quite frankly, we were shocked," said Harold Goldstein, the group's executive director. "Given all
the attention childhood obesity has gotten, we did not expect to see this kind of increase."
The state's childhood
weight profile seems to be bulging in all directions, researchers said, pointing to worsening trend lines for girls and boys
of all ages and all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Although childhood obesity rates looked markedly worse in Los Angeles than
in the Bay Area, no region of the state has been spared.
"It's increasing everywhere, across the board," Goldstein
said. "This epidemic is not going to go away on its own. It's a personal and medical disaster, and not enough is being done."
The results were broken down by state Assembly district in hopes that policymakers would take heed and push harder
for healthier snacks, bottled water and real fruit juice in schools. Bills are pending in the Legislature that would extend
partial bans on junk food and soda already in place.
The new numbers are "pretty sobering," said state Sen. Deborah
Ortiz, D- Sacramento, chair of the Senate Health Committee and an advocate of vending machine restrictions and more consumer
nutrition information in restaurants. "When you think of the projections for our health care costs, it's pretty frightening."
The San Francisco Unified School District was one of the first in the country to move against junk food on school
grounds and claims one of the strictest policies in the nation promoting healthy foods and beverages.
Parents who
backed the policy call it an important first step, suggesting that health messages taught in the classrooms are undermined
when kids step into hallways lined with vending machines full of sugary drinks and pastries.
Still, even the staunchest
advocates of healthy food choices in the schools concede that removing junk food from school campuses is not enough to make
a big dent in the problem.
As if to underscore that point, the new study shows the percentage of overweight children
jumped 9.6 percent in Assembly District 12, which includes the western half of San Francisco, and a whopping 14.3 percent
in District 13, which covers downtown and most of the waterfront.
"People have bad habits everywhere," said Dana Woldow,
parent of two children in the San Francisco schools who leads a district nutrition committee. "This problem took 20 or 30
years to develop, and it's probably going to take 20 or 30 years to fix."
Whatever the root cause, researchers said,
the latest numbers document a growing threat to public health, noting that 75 percent of children who are overweight are expected
to be overweight as adults. That translates into more cases of diabetes, asthma and other chronic diseases.
Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger has scheduled a summit on Sept. 15 in Sacramento at which experts plan to address the issue of childhood health
and nutrition. He also supports a pair of school-nutrition bills, SB12 and SB965, sponsored by state Sen. Martha Escutia,
D-Whittier (Los Angeles County).
Despite the latest findings, experts said, California remains a pacesetter in the
national battle against childhood obesity. Gail Woodward- Lopez, associate director of the UC Berkeley Center for Weight and
Health, said the report underscores the difficulty of changing a culture in some ways geared to passive entertainment and
empty calories.
"Although we've started to raise awareness and concern, we need to move into more concrete efforts
to reverse those trends," she said.
But there isn't universal agreement on just what needs to be done. Despite the
bipartisan support for the Escutia measures, some advocates maintain it's wrong to focus too much attention on junk food and
soda in school vending machines.
Dan Mindus, senior analyst with a Washington, D.C., group called the Center for Consumer
Freedom, argued that the real problem isn't about food choices, but how little exercise kids get.
"Restricting vending
machine options takes our eye off the ball," he said, arguing that kids' caloric intake hasn't increased so much as activity
levels have declined. "What we need to do is get kids exercising in gym class, running around with their friends after school
and having more time at recess. ''
His group, which receives some of its financial support from food and beverage
companies, maintains that high school students in particular should be mature enough to decide on their own what to eat and
drink.
That argument has been used in the past to derail tough rules on school vending machines. The latest studies
don't guarantee such arguments will be overcome this year, Ortiz said.
The latest findings were based on results of
the California Physical Fitness Test, which state educators give to all public-school students in the fifth, seventh and ninth
grades. Results for about 1.4 million students at 7, 624 schools were included in the analysis.
The fitness test includes
a measure of body composition based on a common measure of weight relative to height called the body mass index, or BMI. All
students whose weight pushed them above a "healthy fitness zone" were classified as overweight.
Results across the
state show considerable regional variation, but most of those differences were attributed to demographics.
The latest
study showed Pacific Islanders had the highest percentage of children overweight, at 35.9 percent, followed by Latinos at
35.4 percent, American Indians/Alaskan Natives at 31.7 percent and African Americans at 28.7 percent. Only 17.9 percent of
Asians and 20.6 percent of white children were in the overweight category.
Even in regions of the state with relatively
few childhood weight problems, however, policymakers said more needs to be done to keep kids healthy.
In the Marin-Sonoma
counties district of state Assemblyman Joe Nation, for instance, only 20.5 percent of all schoolchildren were overweight last
year, one of the lowest percentages in the state. Still, that was up from 17.5 percent just three years earlier.
"I
think the Legislature and the governor, in particular, are beginning to pay much more attention to this," Nation, a Democrat,
said Wednesday. "We need to ensure there are healthy alternatives in terms of what people can eat and drink in schools today."
How to calculate your child's body mass index (BMI)
1
Determine your child's weight in pounds and height in inches.
Example:
70 pounds
54 inches tall
2
Divide your child's weight by height.
Example:
70 ÷ 54 = 1.296
3 Divide the
result by the child's height again.
Example:
1.296 ÷ 54 = 0.024
4 Multiply by
703. This is the child's Body Mass Index.
Example:
0.024 x 703 = 16.88
The following Web sites can help you determine
your BMI:
www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/calc-bmi.htm and
www.halls.md/body-mass-index/av.htm
CHART (1):
Childhood obesity in California
Percentage
of children who were overweight in grades 5, 7 and 9 in
California:
2001
2004
All children 26.5
28.1
By gender
Boys
31.8
33.9
Girls 21.0
22.0
By grade
Fifth
28.2
29.3
Seventh 27.0
29.1
Ninth 23.6
25.4
By race/ethnicity
African
American 28.6 28.7
American Indian/Alaskan Native 25.1 31.7
Asian
17.5
17.9
Pacific Islander 31.1
35.9
Filipino 24.1
24.7
Latino 33.7
35.4
White 20.2
20.6
Other 22.3
24.4
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