“That’s A Damn Shame” News of The Day: One in Four Toddlers is Obese

So, the findings are in and not only are American teenagers FAT as hell, so are our babies.

Cnn.com reports:

Researchers calculated the body mass index from a sample of 8,550 Hispanic, black, white, Asian and Native American 4-year-olds. The children were born in 2001, and in 2005, their height and weight were measured — 18.4 percent of them were obese.

“Significant differences in the prevalence of obesity between racial/ethnic groups were evident at 4 years of age,” the researchers wrote in the April issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Using body mass index, they found that 31.2 percent of American Indian/Native Alaskans, 22 percent of Hispanics, 20.8 percent of blacks, 15.9 percent of whites and 12.8 percent of Asians were obese.

“It’s surprising that there are large differences by racial/ethnic group by that age,” said Sarah Anderson, an assistant professor of epidemiology at The Ohio State University and lead study author.

Anderson and co-author Robert Whitaker’s analysis showed that children were becoming obese even before encountering soda and candy vending machines in schools.

“These results really do point to the need for us to focus attention on early childhood and the need for research to understand how these differences can emerge so early,” Anderson said. “To do that, we may need to understand the different family and cultural factors that are at play in these children’s lives.”

Why are the researchers acting surprised that the numbers were different among racial lines. How are these findings any different than any other study about anything including obesity among adults? DUH. The people who are the most oppressed, the most marginalized, lacking the same access to healthy foods and health literacy OF COURSE are going to suffer the most and have the larges impact from any illness. Cultural factors should always be part of studies as a means to understand why things are the way they are. STOP IT, I CAN’T.

Now with that being said, institutionalized racism and classism is driving force of this epidemic, but so is the culture that cooks everything in lard, drenches everything in salt even before tasting it and believes that anyone who eats organic is trying to be white. I’m just saying. Just because you want your legs to be amputated by the age of 45, doesn’t mean the babies should suffer. Cause clearly, we can’t blame them for this one, hell most of them think that if you wrap a carrot in a McDonald’s wrapper it tastes better than carrots sitting on a plain paper plate, so this is issue is strictly the parents’ fault.

On the 5 train heading to Manhattan not too long ago, I saw a little girl eating Cheetos at 9:30 in the morning. Not a banana, not an apple, not even some greasy popcorn, but a damn bag of Cheetos and a Capri Sun. Her momma looking as stupid as she wanted to be and the po’ child had Kool-Aid looking stains on her dress and fingers covered with orange crumbs. A mess. Listen up parents: The next time you think about putting Pepsi in your kid’s sippie cup, think twice and no, that’s doesn’t mean add Diet Pepsi instead. Try some damn WATER.