Nutrition and Fitness: Adolescence 2004
By Terry Cowden
Carrick High School
Overview
The United States now has the highest obesity rate of any industrialized nation
in the world. More than half of all American adults and about one-quarter of all
American children are now obese or overweight. Those proportions have soared
during the last decade, along with the consumption of fast food. This global
epidemic of fast food and fat foods has caused obesity to shoot up. The overfed
are eating more of the foods that predispose them to disease (Lappe 7). The rate of
obesity is twice as high today as it was in the early 1960’s. The rate of obesity
among American children is twice as high as it was in the late 1970’s. According
to James O. Hill, a prominent nutritionist at the University of Colorado, “We’ve
got the fattest, least fit generation of kids ever!” It is this that gives me the
greatest concern.
Although the current rise in obesity has a number of complex causes, genetics
is not one of them. The American gene pool has not changed radically in the past
few decades. What has changed is the nation’s way of eating and living. The
cause is as obvious as the noses on our faces. In simple terms: when people eat
more and move less, they get fat. A generation ago, mothers made their kids go
outside and play. That meant basketball, baseball, hopscotch, running in tall
grass, roller-skating or just biking. Today, it’s video games and full-length
movies on DVD’s with surround sound. The typical American child now spends
about 21 hours a week watching television – roughly one and a half months of
television every year. That does not include the time children spend in front of a
screen watching videos, playing video games, or using the computer. Outside of
school, the typical American child spends more time watching television than
doing any other activity except sleeping (Schlosser 46). It is like pulling teeth to
get our teens out from in front of the television