{"id":217738,"date":"2010-01-23T12:33:51","date_gmt":"2010-01-23T17:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.34074"},"modified":"2010-01-22T17:25:24","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T22:25:24","slug":"why-are-american-teens-getting-so-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/217738","title":{"rendered":"Why Are American Teens Getting So Fat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One in five US teenagers has unhealthy cholesterol levels, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/span> The two stats<\/a> that stick out from this study are: (1) <\/span>1\/3 of teens are sufficiently overweight to qualify for cholesterol screening and (2) 14% of normal weight teens <\/span>have unhealthy cholesterol levels<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

This reminds me of a great piece Marc Ambinder wrote<\/a> last year about what an American obesity policy should do:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/p>\n
And
\nwith obesity, we’re dealing primarily with children and prevention.
\nObese adults are not going to lose weight unless they decide to have
\ntheir stomachs separated from their digestive tracts. Megan is
\npessimistic about any policy intervention and questions any such
\nintervention from a moral level. But any sensible policy is designed to
\nchange the environment<\/a>
\nfor children, not for adults. It’s not as if children are making
\nchoices about food and enjoyment in a vacuum. Childhood obesity is
\nfairly contagious: if you’ve got an obese friend, you are more likely
\nto be obese. The heritability quotient for obesity is .65, which means
\nthat obese people tend to produce obese children; whether this is a
\nconsequence of genetics, epigenetic factors, pre-natal nutrition —
\nit’s not clear. As kids and adults, obese people tend to cluster with
\nobese people. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
There are compelling public
\npolicy reasons to try and reduce the rate of childhood obesity.
\nLectures and hectoring and moral suasion don’t work, but changing the
\nenvironment these kids grow up in might work. Even such a fairly minor
\nintervention as better maternal health habits can influence the
\nlikelihood that a child will become obese. Breastfeeding babies reduces
\nthe chances for obesity. Kids who sleep more as children will be less
\nobese as adults. Kids who aren’t as exposed to pesticides are less
\nlikely to become obese. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
Without
\nreversing the trendline, obese kids will continue to self-segregate;
\nstigma within their group will be reduced, which is good, but it will
\ngrow among thin people, there will be more intergroup tension. John
\nEdwards’s two Americas: a fat America and a thin America, coming in
\nabout 15 years to neighborhoods near you. <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ve written about the deeper trends under childhood obesity and
\nthey’re devastatingly simple and intractable. America is very good at
\nproducing cheap, high-calorie food. In almost any other time in human
\nhistory, the impulse to maximize calorie intake is necessary to live.
\nToday, it’s a one-way-street to obesity and health complications that
\ncost the country tens of billions in medical costs.<\/div>\n



\n

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\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One in five US teenagers has unhealthy cholesterol levels, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The two stats that stick out from this study are: (1) 1\/3 of teens are sufficiently overweight to qualify for cholesterol screening and (2) 14% of normal weight teens have unhealthy cholesterol levels. This reminds me of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}