Families, schools, food industry key to curbing childhood obesity

At Orange County High, the sugar rush begins barely an hour and a half into the school day — at 9:30 am.

As students dart through the hallways between classes, a crowd builds at a popular meeting place. It’s a food cart loaded with cookies, candy bars and other sugary treats.

Business is brisk. But do kids really need a Kit Kat bar at 9:30 a.m.?

“Maybe not a Kit Kat bar,” said Gene Kotulka, the school’s principal. “But we have other breakfast items on there, because we have some kids that don't eat breakfast.”

Kotulka is unapologetic about the cart’s offerings. He says it brings in $400 to $500 a week — extra cash that pays for after-school sports programs at a time when the budget is tight.

Still, it’s not the kind of breakfast he’d want for his kids.

“But that's my job as a parent to educate my kids,” he said. “And hopefully they'll make good choices.”

The kinds of food kids are eating these days is getting more scrutiny than ever as obesity rates among children have tripled from a generation ago.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three children in America is either obese or overweight. That puts them at risk at some point in their lives of developing Type-II diabetes, a disease that — until now — affected mostly middle-aged adults.

Even more alarming is a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that concluded this could be the first generation to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.

‘Do or die’ moment
Doreese Licari is a 10th-grader at Arlington Catholic High School outside of Boston. At 15, she weighs about 250 pounds and has been overweight for most of her young life. Just a few months before we met her, she learned she has a good chance of developing diabetes.

Debating whether marketing high-fat foods and sugary snacks to children is actually contributing to childhood obesity, with Jennifer Pomeranz, Yale Rud Center Legal Initiative director, and Justin Wilson, Center for Consumer Freedom.

“It was extremely scary,” she said. “I've never had to experience anything like that before. My mom saw me crying because I was so scared. I was almost lost.”

Doreese called it her “do or die” moment — a phrase that may be more apt than she realizes.

“An overweight or obese child who develops Type-II diabetes by age 15 may be looking at renal failure, a heart attack, or severe neurological damage before the 30th birthday,” said Dr. David Ludwig, who leads a weight-loss program at Boston Children’s Hospital, where Doreese and her family turned for help.

“Because of the obesity epidemic, we may be looking at heart attack as becoming a pediatric disease,” he said.

Doreese’s mother, Charlene Deveney, as a single parent who sometimes works seven days a week holding down two jobs, often didn’t have enough time — or money — to put nutritious meals on the table. She says she regrets she didn’t see the warning signs of her daughter’s diabetes earlier.

“I felt like it was my fault,” she said. “Because I thought I should have been more on top of things that she was eating.”

Doreese has some regrets of her own, too.

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