Mr. Lehne’s point is mostly valid, but needs some clarifications, I think. Yes, the problems of childhood obesity in the US is 99% related to poor parenting choices, and this is leading to blood lipid abnormalities at rates not previously seen. The American Academy of Pediatrics is now suggesting that children should be agressively screened for lipid abnormalities, and statins can be considered in the most severe cases, when diet & exercise recomendations are not effective (or are ignored). It is scary that young children are now found to have significant amounts of plaque in their vessels (”hardening of the arteries”), at levels previously only seen in older adults. This is a dangerous condition. Sure, medications can have side effects, and muscle weakness is a possible, but fairly rare side effect of statins. Cholesterol plaques in the carotid & coronary vessels can be a bigger problem than that!

The mainstay of treatment should absolutely be diet & exercise. Using medication in the most severe of cases is hardly criminal.

See Monday’s article on “Triathlon Camp” for children for the best solution! This is great!

Poor parenting is rampant in this country as parents have failed to teach their kids respect, not to litter, take school seriously, obey the law, take care of their possesions, to say thank you…on and on goes the list. the real loser will be this country when these morons reach adulthood and enter the workforce and society…sad, sad, sad.

I like A. Patriots answer. First because he has assigned himself the status of Patriot. Second of all because his generation is the last good generation. If the current parents are not teaching their children correctly then perhaps the previous generation failed to teach something to the current parents.

Each generation assumes the children of the next generation or their off springs will be the beginning of the end. In the 1930’s the movies had the “Dead end Kids”, these were juvenile delinquents that were pulling society into the mud, they of course grew up and became the “Bowery Boys”. In the 1950’s there was the movie “Chalk Board Jungle” talking about juvenile delinquents being out of control. Of course we had drugs and sex and long hair that will leave the kids brain dead.

yet society survives.

If docs won’t prescribe our fat kids cholesterol fighting drugs, then we won’t be able to complain about the government doing enough to pay for our drugs.

Personally, I think they should put the porkers on a treadmill with a bag of Cheetos and a 60oz Coke in front of them and let them run for awhile.

I agree with Amazed-gasp!-except I’d leave out the Cheetos and soda. A friend and I were studying a photograph of opening day at Disneyland (’55 or ‘56?) taken from an elevated location. We noted there wasn’t a fat kid OR adult in the whole huge crowd. We then realized this was before the advent of McDonald’s. Read the fine print of any weight loss gimmick out there and they all say the same thing; diet and exercise.

You can’t blame McDonald’s, Nintendo or the internet. The parents need to get the kids out of the house and active. PERIOD.

No question about that. We need to be ever diligent-a lot of the things meant to make life easier can hurt us.

Technology is the art of making us more lazy. And we are getting ever increasingly efficient at it. Some of it, I agree, is just bad parenting, but then add in single parents who work too much or too many jobs that would like to be the good parent, young parents who have no business being parents in the first place, uneducated, ignorant parents who would surely like to be parents, and the abnormaly large amount of advertising that is directed at young children to consume all of this crap food that is abundantly available at a cheaper price than most whole foods. Enter in High-fructose Corn Syrup. I wouldn’t say it’s the best enviroment to raise healthy children for some. All in all, education is one of the best preventative medicines money can buy.

I blame the obesity problem on the advent of the remote control. That was the beginning of the demise of many healthy lifestyles.

Jimmy, is there any way that unfit parents can be sterilized? That’s the only solution to your perspective of the problem. I know it isn’t the same, but both of my parents spent long days and hours away from us as kids often working irregular hours, yet we always had outlets to burn calories and we rarely ate easy processed foods. We were cooking at about 12 years old and “forced” to eat veggies and good stuff.

Amazed, you never cease to amaze me.

“Jimmy, is there any way that unfit parents can be sterilized? That’s the only solution to your perspective of the problem”

Sterilization? The only solution? Perhaps you missed my last sentence:

“All in all, education is one of the best preventative medicines money can buy.”

Where do you get your logic from and how did you conclude sterilization from what I said? I was cooking for myself at age 10 while my mother was at work. I know all about it. Im not saying that what I listed are the only things contributing or that they are even the main thing, they are just situations that add to the tragedy. I rode my bike all over town when I was 10. Good luck getting a parent today to let their child do that given the heightened state of fear across the country coupled with video and computer games, tv shows, etc. etc. I think you need to do some serious reflecting before you hit that submit button for your posts. Good grief.