May 22, 2002 (Hearst News Service) -- The best way to slim down the growing youth obesity rate is for parents to make sure their children are breastfed, that their TV-watching time is cut and that they have a proper diet and plenty of exercise, a government medical expert told a Senate panel Tuesday.
"Obesity is an epidemic in the United States," Dr. William Dietz, director of the division of nutrition and physical activity at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 8 million American adolescents - 15 percent of the total - are overweight, Dietz told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee hearing. That's triple the rate in 1980, he added.
Health problems stemming from being overweight or obese are responsible for 300,000 deaths a year, said Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., himself a doctor. That number puts weight problems right behind tobacco smoking as leading factors in causing death, he said.
Frist, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and other senators plan to introduce legislation that would ratchet up significantly the importance of fighting obesity on the list of federal health priorities, which includes battling cancer, AIDS and other diseases.
The legislation would give $20 million next year to expand physical education and nutrition education at schools.
It would also add $68.4 million to the $125 million the CDC spent last year to mount a campaign targeting children aged nine to 13 with media messages about the importance of developing healthy eating and exercise habits early in life.
People are deemed overweight when they weigh 10 percent more than their ideal body weight and obese if they weigh 20 percent more, according to the U.S. surgeon general's height-weight index. For instance, a 5-foot-6-inch adult is considered overweight at 160 pounds and obese at 190.
Dietz said breastfeeding is an important way to reduce the number of children who are overweight. Medical studies show that breast-fed infants are less likely to be obese later in life, he said.
He also said that "reducing television time appears to be an effective strategy to treat and prevent obesity."
Another witness, TV fitness expert Denise Austin, argued that exercise is the most important factor in fighting youthful weight gain.
"Food is not our enemy," she said. "It's standing still, sitting there, doing nothing. . . . We need to get up and move more."
Dietz agreed that exercise is important. "Fewer children walk to school, and the lack of central shopping in our communities mean that we make fewer trips on foot than we did 20 years ago," he said. "Hectic work and family schedules allow little time for physical activity."
But he also attributed the expanding waistlines of American youngsters to fast-food consumption, which now accounts for more than 40 percent of what the average family spends on food.
Copyright 2002 Hearst News Service. All rights reserved.
