10 August 2014
Thanks, McDonald's, KFC, Coca-Cola,
et al.
New Zealand has been identified as the country which is
requiring the most surgical repair of obesity-related disease of the hips in
children. I am happy to listen to Waikato Hospital researcher,
Orthopaedic Surgeon,Dr Richard Willoughby, who writes: "It is
likely that rising obesity has influenced the overall trend towards younger
children developing SCFE,"
Dr Willoughby also notes that Kiwi kids have five times the rate of these diseases than US kids, and ten times that of South Korea. Maori kids are apparently worst of all, although no comparative figures are given to show how bad the others are.
As I've commented a couple of times, we live in a fairly privileged area, with a Decile 10 school. We're the poor, white trash, as it happens. As I see the kids who go to school with ours, I see an awful lot of fat kids. If anything, living in an Asian- and Indian-dominated suburb (69% of the kids at school are either one) the fat kids I see daily are mostly Asian and Indian.
Why the hell are we letting our kids become obese? Note that I am using the "we" collectively, as our children are absolutely in the middle of the healthy weight range - not because of any deliberate attempt to control their weight, but simply because they do not eat crap. They do precious little exercise, although all of them walk to school, eat white bread and carbohydrate-high foods by the bucketload, but are all at the ideal weight for their age & height.
Research has shown the bleeding obvious point that kids nowadays spend half as much time on their feet as kids 40 years ago, so that might be a part of it, but I would be placing all of my bet on the twin powers of sugar and high-fat foods - takeaways and soft drinks.
?
Copyright © Alan Charman