Update: National Obesity Crisis Takes More Children HostageFor New York's Kids, a Special Set of Challenges
Get the Best Family Activities
New Book Offers Eating Options for Kids There’s an obesity crisis in America and no group is as hard hit as kids are. Recent studies show that nearly 8 million children and teens — or about 15 percent — are overweight or obese. Now a breakthrough new book aimed at the growing number of working moms who can’t supervise what their kids eat around the clock will arm families with much of the ammunition they need to successfully beat the munchies and other waistline and health saboteurs. Memphis, Tenn.-based weight loss expert Rallie McAllister, M.D., both a physician and a mother of four, includes some of the answers in THE HEALTHY LUNCHBOX: The Working Mom's Guide to Keeping You and Your Kids Trim (LifeLine Press, $19.95). “The worst thing you can do to help a child lose weight is to put him or her on a diet,” Dr. McAllister says. “For kids, dieting is risky business because their rapidly growing bodies depend on an adequate number of daily calories for proper development and weight-loss diets can also inflict emotional damage that can lead to overeating or bingeing.” There’s a better way, she writes, including getting kids involved in meal planning, shopping and cooking, and hosting an international night once a week, which helps introduce new foods on a regular basis. She also suggests serving water with each meal. “Getting kids used to drinking water helps them meet daily fluid requirements, prevents overeating, and improves their digestion,” she says. Other tips include replacing favorite high-fat, high-calorie foods and snacks with similar, healthier ones. For example, she recommends switching ice cream to frozen yogurt or frozen fruit pops, potato chips to baked chips or whole-grain pretzels, soda to flavored seltzer, and cookies to dried fruit. Regular physical activity is also important to maintaining a healthy weight, Dr. McAllister writes. That’s why, she suggests, parents should “create an after-school job box” — meaning that after school, kids have to pull out a chore, project, or activity and accomplish it before they are allowed to watch TV or play video games. Studies show a direct correlation between the number of daily hours kids engage in these types of sedentary activities and childhood obesity, Dr. McAllister writes. — Denise Mann The Lunchbox Goes Organic In response to a growing problem on the national nutrition front — with fast food replacing real food on kids' lunch trays and parents too time-strapped to prepare a healthy lunch for them — a new pre-packaged lunch for kids, due to hit supermarket shelves by summer's end, will offer organic deli meats for the first time. The Organic Lunchbox, produced by Applegate Farms, proposes to give kids a healthy way to enjoy premium quality natural and organic products. Available in three varieties — organic turkey breast, organic bologna, and pepperoni pizza — the packages will contain less carbohydrates, sugars and saturated fats than other popular kids' meals-to-go. The two meat varieties will also contain organic mozzarella string cheese, organic crackers and organic fruit bears. The company has enlisted the support of a no-nonsense personality-driven team of cartoon lunch boosters, known as the Lunch Crew, to populate the products' packaging. Construction workers Jigsaw Jenny, Bulldozer Bob, Jackhammer Joe, and Rivet Rita, led by team leader Piledriver Pete, will pepper the outside packaging with pithy catch phrases like: "Building lunch is our job. Eating it is yours." Applegate Farms, founded in 1987, does not use artificial ingredients, coloring agents or chemical preservatives in processing. Its livestock are raised on organic feed on small family farms, and are never given antibiotics or growth hormones. The Organic Lunchbox will be available nationally at Whole Foods and other major natural grocers. — K.M. Obese Kids Must Stay Longer in Hospital Obese children have a tougher time recovering from tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Southwestern studied the charts of 41 overweight or obese children who required tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy because of obstructive symptoms — symptoms such as snoring and sleep apnea, in which patients repeatedly stop breathing during sleep. They divided the kids into three groups — overweight, obese and morbidly obese. The doctors found that children who were morbidly obese needed to stay in the hospital an average of over five days. In fact, only one of the 17 children in this group was able to go home on the same day as the surgery. Obese children needed an average of three days in the hospital. In the overweight group, only three of the eight children needed to be admitted to the hospital at all, and the average hospital stay was less than one day. The researchers also found that the most obese children were also the most likely to need care in the intensive care unit. More than three-quarters of the morbidly obese patients ended up in intensive care (13 of 17 kids), and stayed there an average of over two days. About one quarter of the obese children (the middle group) required ICU stays. In the overweight group, only one child required admission to the ICU, or about 13 percent. These research findings were presented at the May 2003, annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology. — Dale Mazer, M.D., M.P.H.