Parents must help fight the fat in adolescents
By Chelsea Brown July 4, 2011 at 8:00 pm 
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It is very apparent that adolescent obesity has become a rather large issue in the United States over the last few years. However, most people are unaware that Arizona itself is one of the leading states of chunky children.
It is unsettling, but not uncommon to see a youngster that is already struggling and waddling around due to their extra baggage. Most of us have noticed these changes in the youth’s weight gain, but unfortunately, we have become so accustomed to it that it is now often overlooked and downright ignored.
Which raises the question, who is really to blame for these growing guts? The adults, who are responsible for teaching children the proper balance of nutrition and exercise? Or the kids, who are after all, just kids?
First of all, kids do not play the way they did back when I was little (which really was not that long ago). Instead of riding bikes or running in circles around the block, children are planting themselves like zombies in front of the television and playing video games without interruption until dinnertime.
Many would choose to watch their favorite TV show in the comfort of their living room rather than going to play outside. While of course this is a choice made by the child, parents are not forcing them to get the adequate amount of exercise. They continue to buy their child mind-numbing and belly-building video games, allowing them to become the ultimate couch potatoes. Parents need to make sure that their children are learning the importance of exercise at a young age so that they do not carry this harmful and lazy habit into adulthood.
Food is obviously a huge part of the problem. Ever hear the saying, you are what you eat? Well, figuratively speaking, it is true.
Children pack themselves to the brim with all the delicious but deceitful treats that we all know and love. It is no surprise that they are putting on the pounds.
While schools have tried to cut back on the junk food, kids are still getting their hands on the grub any way they can. But who can really blame them? That is good stuff. And the majority of the time the goodies are packed in their lunches by a parent. Lunchtime is not the only meal that these heavyweights’ parents have sabotaged. Breakfast, the most important meal of the day, often consists of either a sugary bowl of cereal or some sort of Pop-Tart concoction. Dinner is not much better. When parents actually have time to make a meal, and do not stop for McDonalds on the way home, the portion that the child receives is that of a grown up. When a kid is becoming noticeably obese, it is the responsibility of the parent to hold a food intervention. Regrettably, many do not.
Usually when you see a plump child, the parents are not exactly in shape to run a marathon. In fact, they are most likely pretty heavyset themselves. They were not properly introduced to the food pyramid or the treadmill. Because they do not maintain a healthy lifestyle, many do not encourage their children to do so.
This is unfair to the youth and creates an endless cycle of obesity. Until parents can set a positive example for their children, kids will continue to grow out rather then up.
Reach the columnist at cwbrown1@asu.edu
The issue is a lot more complicated than lazy parents. Our government subsidizes junk food, effectively making it cheaper to buy junk food calories than healthy calories. We focus on “diet” related products rather than real food (how many parents, even health-conscious ones, complain about avocados having too much fat and then pick up a bag 100-calorie snack packs of Oreo cookies?), we’ve completely lost touch with food culture (have you ever watched Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution? High school students don’t know where butter comes from ["corn?" -- which, ironically, is not far off considering all of the can't-believe-it's-not-butter products that are filled with corn byproducts] and little kids don’t recognize potatoes when they aren’t french fries.), kids have less than a half an hour to eat lunch at schools, the food served at school isn’t even real food (if it comes wrapped in plastic, can we agree it’s not food?) — think about that, our schools are actually teaching students to eat unhealthfully by feeding them junk every day. It’s not only the parents setting a bad example.
I mean, you mention schools trying to “cut back on junk food”, but friend, there is nothing but junk food in schools. There are no fresh fruits and vegetables (except the tasteless iceberg lettuce, chemical covered toppings and overprocessed ranch dressing). Even the fruit often come chopped up in cups. There are no home-cooked (by which I mean, cafeteria-lady cooked from scratch) meals. Chicken nuggets are not a wholesome meal. Just because they try to have less soda and twinkies does not mean they’re headed in the right direction.
That’s not even touching on the issue of poverty and food deserts, which before you criticize parents for being fat, you might want to look into. Then you can look at minimum wage versus living wage, the wealth gap is growing, both parents have to work (which is quite a difference from “the good old days” when women rarely worked and instead were expected to be caretakers, effectively freeing up their time to be personal chefs for their family, and yeah, they would want to kick the kids out of the house where they could run around just so they could get some peace and quiet) to even put any calories on the table, be them healthy or not, and that even to do that they have to work many hours.
And we’ve become OBSSESSED with dieting and exercise. Diets. Do. Not. Work. I forget the exact statistic, but with the amount of money spent on dieting in the U.S. – JUST the U.S. – the UN says we could feed the entire world.
Plus, both children and adults are being sold fake food on TV. We don’t have cooking education classes in schools anymore. Most of us haven’t ever met a farmer. Even our “lean meats” are unhealthy, filled with chemicals and antibiotics in order to keep them from being sick from living in concentrated feeding operations.
So, fat parents making fat children? Sure. But I’d say it’s pretty hard not to be fat in a culture like this. Which might explain (better than the idea that parents have all of a sudden become fat and lazy and uneducated) why so many of us are.