Flashes of Panic

On an unrelated web search, I found this article, which was pretty moving the first time I read it and still packs a punch. (I have a lot of respect for John Brant as a magazine feature writer.) I remember reading it and saying, “I understand why this is important, now.”

To a potentially catastrophic degree, our kids have stopped moving. One quarter of Americans under age 19 are overweight. Worse, approximately 5.3 million kids, or 12 percent of all youths aged 6 to 17, are seriously overweight. What’s more, the percentage of overweight young people has more than doubled in the past 30 years, with most of the increase coming since the late ’70s. Coronary artery disease, already the nation’s number-one killer, will likely skyrocket over the coming decades. As will diabetes, high blood pressure, and other serious “lifestyle” diseases that are associated with being overweight. The bitter fruit of today’s inactivity will almost certainly come to harvest.

“This is an epidemic in the U.S., the likes of which we have not had before in chronic disease,” warns William Dietz, director of nutrition at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Bruce Leonard, a veteran fitness advocate recently retired from the CDC, states the case even more bluntly: “In a few decades, we’re going to learn that for the first time in American history, our children lived shorter and less healthful lives than their parents.”