There were few if any overweight kids in my elementary school. There was sometimes blood on the playground but few “hefty” kids, mainly because there was British bulldog before school, soccer at recess and rugby football at lunchtime.
After school, we climbed the grassy hill up behind Mick Nolan’s place and slid down many times before dark. Then came family dinner at the table, maybe a game of Chinese checkers with mom and dad, some comics and bed.
Things for kids to do before and after school have changed since the 1950s, and not for the better.
Television arrived first. Then video games.
A new study shows a negative association between screen time and the heart health of kids. Too many hours spent in front of TV, computer and video game screens, says the study, are worse than sedentary time for children when it comes to the risk of heart disease.
Not only that — screen time is snack time.
This new study of more than 500 children between the ages of eight and 10 with at least one obese biological parent was conducted by researchers from the University of Ottawa, Université de Montreal, Concordia University, Université Laval and McGill University.
This really isn’t news, of course, or even unexpected.
A StatsCan report entitled “Overweight and obesity in children and adolescents: Results from 2009 to 2011” suggests that the prevalence of overweight and obesity has risen among children and adolescents.
Children who carry significant excess weight, says the report, run the risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, poor emotional health and diminished social well-being.
None of which contributes to learning or enjoying school.
In fact, obesity in Canadian children substantially increased between 1989 and 2004, with rates in boys increasing from two per cent to 10 per cent, and rates among girls increasing from two per cent to nine per cent over that time.
As well, obese children tend to become obese adults, making childhood obesity a public-health concern.
Yet another report, this one in the Canadian Medical Association Journal entitled Obesity in Canada predicts that adult obesity is “expected to surpass smoking as the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality … and represents a burden of $3.96 billion on the Canadian economy each year.”
Obesity costs the Canadian economy between $4.6 billion and $7.1 billion a year. Those costs are split pretty evenly between direct health-care costs and indirect costs, such as lost productivity of people unable to work either because of disability or because they are unable to find employment due to discrimination.
The usual suspects in all this include not only TV, but diet.
Cultural culinary habits may tell part of the story.
International obesity rates, that is, percentages of a population with citizens whose body mass includes or exceeds 30 per cent fat, vary greatly from a low of 3.4 per cent in Japan and Korea to the U.S, which tips the scale at 30.6 per cent.
Canada comes in at 14.3 per cent, but only 9.4 per cent of the cheese-, croissant- and magret de canard-loving French are considered obese.
Go figure, but bien fait.
Interestingly, Canada’s “lightest” community is Richmond, which has a significant Asian population and an obesity rate of only 5.3 per cent.
But back to snack-munching, video- and TV-fixated kids.
Hope Wills, a pediatric-nutrition consultant, has two suggestions:
First, promote conscious eating. Turn off the TV, radio and computer games during meals and snacks. Hundreds of studies report that children who snacked while watching TV ate more than children who ate their snack at the table.
Then (and this is the hard part): Be a good example. Eat meals and snacks together as a family as much as possible. Children learn through observation and imitation.
They will learn to make good food choices by watching you.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
