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DEL.ICIO.USKids need nutrition education
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jason Getz/AJC
Liesl Wiedmann, 6, of Lilburn, Zarah Stewart, 7, of Lawrenceville, and Maura Pridmore, 5, of Lilburn, right, exercise to the direction of Trey McNease (not pictured) in the class, Fit Kidz, at Gold's Gym Thursday afternoon in Lilburn on Oct. 26.
The pediatrician wraps up your child’s exam with one final question.
“How’s the appetite?”
That, generally, is about as close as the discussion gets to healthy eating, proper nutrition, weight management. It’s over, done with and forgotten in seconds.
Fiona A. Blair, a Harvard- and Emory-trained pediatrician, wants to alter that scenario, give it substance. She’s heard the recurring alarms about childhood obesity, and she’s responding.
You’ve probably heard the news. Kids are showing up in pediatricians’ offices with ailments that you used to see only in adults. Type 2 diabetes. Gallstones. Nonalcoholic cirrhosis.
Studies and research have found that about 34 percent of U.S. children 6 to 19 are overweight; type 2 diabetes represents up to 45 percent of new diagnoses of the illness in children and adolescents; 25 million U.S. children and adolescents are overweight.
Blair of Snellville wants to help curb the tide.
“We may be living in a time where we outlive the younger generation because their health is so poor,” the married mother of four said. “Our children’s life expectancy won’t be as long, or their quality of life won’t be as good. This has to be a concern for everyone, because it is going to affect everybody.”
For Blair, health care is in the family bloodline. Her late mother was a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital in Massachusetts. As a child, Blair was intrigued with the family pediatrician, the way he cared, put kids at ease.
“I definitely wanted to do what he did,” she told me.
She earned her medical degree and completed her residency at Emory University. She joined The Sulton Pediatric Group, a primary care office in Lithonia and spent 10 years there. Something tugged at her, though, an urge to strike out on her own, try something new.
ABC Pediatric Group, at 2240 W. Park Place Blvd. in Stone Mountain, will open in December. She and her partner, Marcia Cumberbatch, plan to make weight management and nutrition education a pillar of the practice.
A fitness trainer will work with patients. Counseling will be offered to those struggling with their bulging waistlines. Discussions about eating right and exercising will be deliberate, not treated as an aside.
“Counseling on obesity doesn’t pay well,” Blair said, “and it takes a lot of time. “And in the world of HMOs, it’s hard to reconcile the bottom line. But we as a society are going to have to do it, and more and more pediatricians are leaning towards it.”
There’re plenty of places to lay blame for the surge in childhood obesity. It starts at home, though. Kids aren’t the ones buying the food. Parents do. They also buy computers and video games then let their kids vegetate in front of them for hours. Schools curtail recess, and in some places, rule out games of tag. Processed food has become a way of life.
“It’s not even rocket science,” Blair said. “We know that we need to burn energy off, to buy a bundle of apples rather than a bag of chips and cook nutritious foods.”
Strange thing, though. We just don’t do it.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875. Or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
Comments
By dev
October 30, 2006 12:58 AM | Link to this
nutrition full diet
By decatuparent
October 30, 2006 05:01 PM | Link to this
A big part of the solution is so easy and is totally free for school systems. RECESS!!!!! Recess not only provides exercise but also actually improves attention and behavior. There are studies shown that achievement in classrooms that have a good recess or two per day (even on PE days) have higher achievement than classes who do not have recess… even despite the class time lost to recess.
And.. recess doesn’t cost a school system a darned thing.
Also…. why “hot lunch” at school at all. A sandwich on whole wheat, a piece of fruit or two and a skim milk is about all a kid needs for lunch. Well, maybe some pretzels too. What’s with all the chicken fingers, beef nachos and the like? I can’t imagine that that C**P costs more than a couple of slices of bread and some lean lunch meat.