THE CHUBBING OF AMERICA

A 1992 survey of children between the ages of three and seventeen conducted by Louis Harris for Prevention magazine found that 34 percent of kids were significantly overweight, compared with 24 percent only seven years earlier. Thirty-nine percent of boys are overweight, while 30 percent of girls are too heavy.

Not only that, but the older kids are chubbier than the younger ones: 22 percent of children under twelve were overweight, while a depressing 57 percent of thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds were too fat. Because the study looked only at weight and not body-fat percentage, these figures may even underestimate the extent of the problem. Many children, particularly girls, have what appears to be a healthy weight but because of inactivity carry too much body fat. A “huge number of kids” have developed weight problems by their teen years, says Thomas Dybdahl, director of research for Prevention. “By the time they are eighteen or twenty, weight control may already be a losing battle for millions of people.”

Other studies bear out these alarming conclusions. According to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, 40 percent of children aged five to eight are obese, are inactive, or have elevated blood pressure or cholesterol levels—all major coronary-risk factors. As many as half the nation’s schoolchildren are not getting enough exercise to develop healthy hearts and lungs. One study shows that more than half of all female grade-school students and about a quarter of their male counterparts cannot perform a single pull-up. Another found that some 33 percent of school-age boys and 50 percent of girls could not run a mile in under ten minutes.

Still another study, directed by Wynn F. Updike of Indiana University, concluded that student fitness declined precipitously between 1980 and 1990. This study, involving an estimated 9.7 million school-children, compared performance on four tests of strength, endurance, and flexibility. It found that in every test, students in 1990 performed significantly worse than their peers only a decade earlier—for example, it took them a full minute longer to run a mile.