Danger signs evident as youth battle bulge

By KATHERINE HOBY and NZPA

New Zealand children are getting bigger. Dangerously bigger.

There are, as yet, no figures that prove there is an epidemic, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that childhood obesity is becoming a serious health issue.

It's not just kids, of course, but the trouble with obese kids is that they often grow up to be obese adults.

And they face a raft of health problems that not only reduce their quality and length of life, but also threaten the survival of our overburdened health system.

Dr Caroline McElnay, a specialist in public health medicine, said a study in 1989 found that a third of New Zealanders were either overweight or obese. By the time of the next national survey in 1997, that number had climbed to just over half.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the problem is at least as bad among children.

"We don't have clear-cut data yet, but all the signs point to an epidemic of childhood obesity," Dr McElnay said.

Perhaps the most alarming sign is the increasing number of youngsters with type-two diabetes.

It used to be called late-onset diabetes because it affected people over the age of 40. But with children as young as 12 now developing the disease, that name is rarely used nowadays.

The sudden increase in obesity in a single decade rules out a genetic cause, although some children's genes may make them more likely to gain weight.

The cause seems to be our changing lifestyle, Dr McElnay said.

"Very few people have a hormonal or metabolic disorder. In the vast majority of cases it's an energy imbalance - there's more energy going in than is being used up, either they're getting too many calories or not enough exercise. Usually it's both."

All sorts of labour-saving devices, of which the car is the worst culprit, mean people have little need to expend energy. Children's pastimes have undergone the same transformation.

"Kids used to ride bikes," Dr McElnay says. "Now they play on their playstations or watch TV."

One of the biggest changes of the last decade is that children have stopped walking to school. Increasingly busy roads and a string of highly publicised attacks have led parents to drive their children to school instead.

The other half of the equation is nutrition. As time becomes our scarcest resource, families increasingly choose food that can be prepared and eaten quickly. Often those are the very foods that are highest in fat.

Hawkes Bay paediatrician David Barry says there are all sorts of problems associated with childhood obesity.

Apart from diabetes, they include high blood pressure, orthopaedic problems due to the added pressure on bones, sleep disturbances caused by obstructed airways and gall bladder disease.

nzherald.co.nz/health