191k kids studied in the southern california kaiser health system.
Prepandemic, 38.9% of youth in the cohort were overweight or obese compared with 39.4% in the KPSC source population
overweight or obesity increased among 5- through 11-year-olds from 36.2% to 45.7% during the pandemic
among 12-15 year olds, it increased from 38.7% to 43.4%
among 16-17 year olds, it increased from 36.5% to 38.2%
it was even nastier for full blown obesity (above 95th percentile weight)
5-11: 18.8% goes to 26.1%
12-15: 18.6% goes to 23.2%
16-17: 18.4% goes to 20.1%
none of this is good, but it seems that the very young really bore the brunt. these were the ones who had the lowest risk of covid and the most dependence on school and parents to provide opportunities to exercise.
this was a gigantic failure in our duty to them and pushed an additional 9.5% of them into obesity, a comorbidity that has ramifications not just for covid, but for a huge variety of quality of life and health risks going forward. 26.1% obese and 18.9% overweight on top of that is a serious public health problem.
do not ever let anyone tell you these lockdown and close schools policies were not that expensive. they were. educations were disrupted, kids stopped learning, test scores plummeted, and many kids lost touch with the school system altogether. and to add further injury and insult, the most defenseless of our kids got dangerously overweight as well.
this was not their fault. it was ours. we were supposed to be the adults, not the craven polyannas projecting our atavistic fears and impotence onto them and wrecking their lives so we could pretend we “did something.”
This is California data, I suppose. It feels that the greater part of society in California could care less about children's health and well-being. Aside from some parents advocating for their kids, my experience has been an endless panic parade over the health and well-being of the unwell elderly. The idea seems to be that children and young adults need to be masked, denied, restricted, injected and controlled or they will kill someone's elderly parents or grand-parents. No price is too great a burden for the children and youths to bear (including poisoning them with a Pfizer shot for no benefit) if it means that the elderly might get a few more months or a year or two of decrepit living (in fact there is no evidence these measures make any difference at all). It is reflective of a society that no longer believes there is any future and so why bother with the next generation. Very, very depressing.
We are having a poisonous food epidemic. The linoleic acid in seed oil shortcuits the body’s feeling full signal. And it also causes toxic inflammation.
How much better would we have been if government had only 'mandated' an hour-long walk in the sunshine on days it was possible?
I seem to remember a whole class dedicated to running around, and that was after schools stopped having BREAKS dedicated to running around. Everything now is upside-down.
If PARENTS wanted to keep their kids from getting fatter, PARENTS could have done it. I understand the government put up their roadblocks, but this parent doesn’t do roadblocks when it comes to her kid. Parental failure with a side of governmental failure thrown in for good measure.
I live in IL and must have the fattest governor in the U.S.. If our public health "expert" was worth a damn, she would have pointed out his comorbidity, publicly, and used that as a jumping off point to put into place a real public health policy concerning Covid. Make him lose weight and every time he wanted to extend his "emergency powers", he had to show 15-20 lbs of weight loss. No instead we got mask mandates, etc. 🙄
Oh and him canceling school sports teams while his daughter traveled to freer states (Wisconsin and Florida) to continue her equestrian competitions.
That's the whole point - we dirty vectors have to be decontaminated so that our obese and elderly overlords can sleep better at night (though California is a case study in contradictions, as always).
As el gato has said before, it is about the co-morbidities and obesity is to most common comorbidity associated with death from Covid. Public health policies have been misguided from the beginning by stratifying risk by age and not general pre-infection health. With increasing age, there is an expected increase in co-morbidities. Only 5-6 percent of deaths from Covid were in patients with no co-mordidities. Eliminating comorbidities, an 85-year-old has the same survival rate as a healthy 45-50-year-old. So it goes.
So unnecessary. All of it. I used to teach kids about nutrition and exercise when I had my special needs classroom back in the 80s. We ran laps around the school. We had "cooking" once a week-healthy only. I coached kids x-country for 7 years after teaching all day(the kids who had no where to go except home and eat chips in front of a TV that was always on). They gained everything but weight from our running program-self esteem, discipline, fitness. Child obesity has to be high here (Az) because of some cultural norms- Jillian from "The biggest loser" once told a local tribe that their "diet was killing them". This was decades ago. She was correct.
Man, even if Larry Elder doesn't take down Newsom in the recall (though I sincerely hope he does), it has been nothing but comedy gold as the pearl-clutchers at LA times go into fantods as they try to write Elder out of the picture as a "white supremacist."
Kuczmarski RJ, Ogden CL, Guo SS, et al. 2000 CDC growth charts for the United States: methods and development. Vital Health Stat 11. 2002;11(246):1-190.PubMedGoogle Scholar
6.
Freedman DS, Berenson GS. Tracking of BMI z scores for severe obesity. Pediatrics. 2017;140(3):e20171072. doi:10.1542/peds.2017-1072PubMedGoogle Scholar
my personal experience with Kaiser is they attract the budget conscious. I tried the HMO when living in CA and it was what I hear socialized medicine is about. Limited Dr, my then pregnant wife couldn't get a prescription refilled without a month wait, etc.
I haven't looked at the numbers to back up my hunch, but I'd expect there's a correlation between cost conscious - intentional or forced by circumstance or employer - and fattie kids
Of course we should get our advice on what to eat from the food producers! They certainly have the expertise to boost consumption the way they fatten up their animals.
I used to conduct research with obese kids during a stint at USC. Unfortunately, a lot of lower socioeconomic, minority kiddos fall into this category. Lots of my study subjects had families without cars, no access or appetite for fresh produce or grocery stores, unsafe neighborhoods and bad air for moving outside. The protracted public school shutdown for LA has not done any favors for this population. It’s heartbreaking really, because we know now that once the metabolism and brain pathways get reset under the pathology of morbid obesity, it’s almost impossible to change it.
This is California data, I suppose. It feels that the greater part of society in California could care less about children's health and well-being. Aside from some parents advocating for their kids, my experience has been an endless panic parade over the health and well-being of the unwell elderly. The idea seems to be that children and young adults need to be masked, denied, restricted, injected and controlled or they will kill someone's elderly parents or grand-parents. No price is too great a burden for the children and youths to bear (including poisoning them with a Pfizer shot for no benefit) if it means that the elderly might get a few more months or a year or two of decrepit living (in fact there is no evidence these measures make any difference at all). It is reflective of a society that no longer believes there is any future and so why bother with the next generation. Very, very depressing.
The last gasp of the boomer “me” generation. A parting gift, as it were.
We are having a poisonous food epidemic. The linoleic acid in seed oil shortcuits the body’s feeling full signal. And it also causes toxic inflammation.
Say it with me everybody!
How much better would we have been if government had only 'mandated' an hour-long walk in the sunshine on days it was possible?
I seem to remember a whole class dedicated to running around, and that was after schools stopped having BREAKS dedicated to running around. Everything now is upside-down.
If PARENTS wanted to keep their kids from getting fatter, PARENTS could have done it. I understand the government put up their roadblocks, but this parent doesn’t do roadblocks when it comes to her kid. Parental failure with a side of governmental failure thrown in for good measure.
I live in IL and must have the fattest governor in the U.S.. If our public health "expert" was worth a damn, she would have pointed out his comorbidity, publicly, and used that as a jumping off point to put into place a real public health policy concerning Covid. Make him lose weight and every time he wanted to extend his "emergency powers", he had to show 15-20 lbs of weight loss. No instead we got mask mandates, etc. 🙄
Oh and him canceling school sports teams while his daughter traveled to freer states (Wisconsin and Florida) to continue her equestrian competitions.
That's the whole point - we dirty vectors have to be decontaminated so that our obese and elderly overlords can sleep better at night (though California is a case study in contradictions, as always).
As el gato has said before, it is about the co-morbidities and obesity is to most common comorbidity associated with death from Covid. Public health policies have been misguided from the beginning by stratifying risk by age and not general pre-infection health. With increasing age, there is an expected increase in co-morbidities. Only 5-6 percent of deaths from Covid were in patients with no co-mordidities. Eliminating comorbidities, an 85-year-old has the same survival rate as a healthy 45-50-year-old. So it goes.
This is infuriating!
Closing the gyms and the Churches and banning sports certainly didn't help either!
So unnecessary. All of it. I used to teach kids about nutrition and exercise when I had my special needs classroom back in the 80s. We ran laps around the school. We had "cooking" once a week-healthy only. I coached kids x-country for 7 years after teaching all day(the kids who had no where to go except home and eat chips in front of a TV that was always on). They gained everything but weight from our running program-self esteem, discipline, fitness. Child obesity has to be high here (Az) because of some cultural norms- Jillian from "The biggest loser" once told a local tribe that their "diet was killing them". This was decades ago. She was correct.
Man, even if Larry Elder doesn't take down Newsom in the recall (though I sincerely hope he does), it has been nothing but comedy gold as the pearl-clutchers at LA times go into fantods as they try to write Elder out of the picture as a "white supremacist."
back to the diet problems ) carnivore diet , low carb at best, consistent extended fasting weekly
Horrific. Excellent article
Sadly, they’re getting ready to do it again.
that with the loss to education attainment!
How can 26% be in the 95th percentile? Does Kaiser just attract a bunch of fatties?
it used these figures for baseline.
Kuczmarski RJ, Ogden CL, Guo SS, et al. 2000 CDC growth charts for the United States: methods and development. Vital Health Stat 11. 2002;11(246):1-190.PubMedGoogle Scholar
6.
Freedman DS, Berenson GS. Tracking of BMI z scores for severe obesity. Pediatrics. 2017;140(3):e20171072. doi:10.1542/peds.2017-1072PubMedGoogle Scholar
my personal experience with Kaiser is they attract the budget conscious. I tried the HMO when living in CA and it was what I hear socialized medicine is about. Limited Dr, my then pregnant wife couldn't get a prescription refilled without a month wait, etc.
I haven't looked at the numbers to back up my hunch, but I'd expect there's a correlation between cost conscious - intentional or forced by circumstance or employer - and fattie kids
Makes sense. Obesity has got to be good for business.
we also live in perhaps the first time in human history where the poor are fatter than the rich.
(at least in selected western nations)
reducing satyrated fats was the diet rage, while dept of ag pushed high calorie sugars in to a lot of prepared foods. good for farming!
Of course we should get our advice on what to eat from the food producers! They certainly have the expertise to boost consumption the way they fatten up their animals.
I used to conduct research with obese kids during a stint at USC. Unfortunately, a lot of lower socioeconomic, minority kiddos fall into this category. Lots of my study subjects had families without cars, no access or appetite for fresh produce or grocery stores, unsafe neighborhoods and bad air for moving outside. The protracted public school shutdown for LA has not done any favors for this population. It’s heartbreaking really, because we know now that once the metabolism and brain pathways get reset under the pathology of morbid obesity, it’s almost impossible to change it.