6 real culprits that are making American kids fat

There’s no question that America’s youth is fatter than ever: Obesity rates have more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But what’s behind this supersizing of our kids? And what can be done to stop it? President Obama is proposing new rules promoting healthier eating at daycare centers. But the daycare situation may be just part of the problem.

Here are six charts and tables that speak to what experts say could be the real culprit.

Americans are now consuming more than 30 times the amount of sugar they did three centuries ago — some 132 pounds per person per year. And children are no exception. In fact, the Mayo Clinic reports that 16% of the total calories in kids’ diets comes from added sugar — well beyond the recommended 5% to 15% range. The problem, says the Mayo Clinic, is that “added sugar means empty calories (no nutrients beyond calories) that put kids at risk of obesity.” Even more worrisome, says James Greenblatt, chief medical officer at Walden Behavioral Care, a group of treatment centers that specialize in eating disorders, is that sugar is essentially addictive. That’s especially true of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup, Greenblatt adds: “The more you consume, the more you want.”

Having a sweet tooth is one thing. But having an appetite for processed and fast foods may be the bigger problem. These days, children are getting the majority of their calories from items like pizza and burgers, not from healthier fare that can help keep their weight down. Even worse, says Wendy Scinta, a board-certified bariatric physician, is that lists like this show that kids are not eating many of their meals at home in a family setting. “We eat in our cars, in front of the TV, while texting, etc.,” she says. Such social isolation, says Scinta, only contributes to the obesity problem.

American households are watching more than eight hours of TV a day — a sizable increase from a couple of generations ago. (In the early 1960s, viewership averaged five hours a day.) The issue is that more time in front of the TV means less time engaging in physical activities, say obesity experts. Caroline Cederquist, co-founder and medical director of bistroMD, a weight-loss meal plan, points to research that shows that adolescent boys who watch several shows per day are twice as likely to have insulin resistance, which is correlated with weight gain and can lead to a host of serious medical problems, including diabetes. Look at the household viewing numbers and Cederquist points to a further troubling reality: “The American child spends more time watching TV than he or she does in school.”

It’s one thing that children may not be getting enough exercise. But apparently, even how they get to school could be contributing to the obesity epidemic, say researchers. They point to the fact that over the past 40 years, kids are far less likely to take their bikes or walk and far more likely to hop into the backseat of the mom (or dad)-mobile. And even that little bit of daily exercise counts for something, says Claudia Borzutzky, medical director of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Empower Weight Management Clinic. In turn, the math becomes simple: “More calories in + less calories out = greater accumulation of weight,” says Borzutzky.

If it sometimes seems as if our kids’ eyes are too big for their stomachs, perhaps it’s not their fault. The fact remains portion sizes have dramatically increased since the 1950s — a situation the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dubbed “The new (ab)normal”, saying the connection between serving size and our expanding waistline can’t be overlooked. The CDC goes so far as to encourage diners to “ask the managers at…restaurants to offer smaller meals.”

Aside from being confronted with larger portion sizes, children are also being confronted with advertising for fast-food chains — lots and lots of it. And the numbers keep growing — up 8% to $4.63 billion in 2012 versus 2009, according to Nielsen. Critics of the fast-food industry argue that all this promotion leads to more poundage. There is “the need for continued concern about potential negative effects of fast food marketing on the diets of children and teens,” says the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity in a recent report.