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Fat-Free Kids

Aired August 04, 2003 - 13:37   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, there's all kinds of good ways to keep your kids fit, but it's also very important to have their body mass checked on a regular basis.
Our Elizabeth Cohen here to explain, well, I guess how often we get it checked, and need to monitor our kids. We don't know if they're maybe obese, right?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And there are new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which are just coming out now, for how pediatricians can prevent and treat obesity. When the government last checked, which was three years ago, 15 percent of U.S. kids were overweight, and everyone thinks it's gone way up since then.

Let's take a look at the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations here. The first one, is they're telling pediatricians, calculate a child's BMI. What that means is the pediatrician takes the height, the weight, the gender, the age, and smushes it altogether into this very complicated formula and comes up with a number and that number tells you whether or not the child is overweight. Secondly, they say that physicians, pediatricians should encourage healthy eating, especially if the child is overweight, encourage exercise. They should tell parents to limit TV to two hours per day, and they should advocate with lawmakers and food companies to make healthier food available to kids.

Now when you look at this list, one of the first words that came to my mind was duh. If you bring your overweight child to the pediatrician, of course the pediatrician is going to say, gee, Mrs. Cohen, you really ought to make sure your child eats less and exercises more, and I think that sort of tells you something about the frustration that doctors have with this, that there really isn't so much that they can do when a child is overweight, besides encourage those very obvious things. There is no magic pill.

PHILLIPS: That's right, because we go for a checkup once a year, at least for the kids. If we know our child is a bit overweight or struggling with obesity, I mean, should our child go to the doctor more than once a year?

COHEN: One of the problems here, is that if you really want to know if your child is overweight, if you're not sure, if it's not obvious, you do have to go to the doctor, and the reason for that is, is that on the Internet, there are lots of good sites, like the CDC site, for example, that has calculators for adults. You put in your height and weight and it tells you whether or not you're overweight. That does not exist for kids. What they have, is they have this conglomeration of charts, like this one here, there's' blue for boys, and then there are ones that are pink for girls, and they're different for different ages, and then there's a whole other chart that you use to calculate a BMI, and have you to plot age versus height versus weight. I tried to do it for my own children, and I couldn't figure it out. So you can't figure it out on your own if you're not quite sure of your child.

If your 6-year-old weighs 200 pounds, obviously you have a weight problem. There's no place for parents to go, gee, I think they're a little bit heavy, but I'm not sure.

PHILLIPS: So you're saying that our child could look normal weight wise, but really is obese.

COHEN: And the use of the word normal is what's so important here. There have been studies that shown that parents have said, gee, little Billy is fine, he's not overweight, when in fact little Billy is 10 pounds overweight. The issue is that Billy just looks like his friends, who are also overweight. As more and more kids become overweight, they just sort of start to look like their peers, and that misleads parents into thinking everything is OK when it isn't. Eyeball something not always the best way.

PHILLIPS: We have so much to worry about, yet this is one more thing.

COHEN: This is a big one. If they're big as a child they're big as an adult. That leads to all sorts of health problems.

PHILLIPS: Elizabeth Cohen, Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired August 4, 2003 - 13:37   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, there's all kinds of good ways to keep your kids fit, but it's also very important to have their body mass checked on a regular basis.
Our Elizabeth Cohen here to explain, well, I guess how often we get it checked, and need to monitor our kids. We don't know if they're maybe obese, right?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And there are new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which are just coming out now, for how pediatricians can prevent and treat obesity. When the government last checked, which was three years ago, 15 percent of U.S. kids were overweight, and everyone thinks it's gone way up since then.

Let's take a look at the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations here. The first one, is they're telling pediatricians, calculate a child's BMI. What that means is the pediatrician takes the height, the weight, the gender, the age, and smushes it altogether into this very complicated formula and comes up with a number and that number tells you whether or not the child is overweight. Secondly, they say that physicians, pediatricians should encourage healthy eating, especially if the child is overweight, encourage exercise. They should tell parents to limit TV to two hours per day, and they should advocate with lawmakers and food companies to make healthier food available to kids.

Now when you look at this list, one of the first words that came to my mind was duh. If you bring your overweight child to the pediatrician, of course the pediatrician is going to say, gee, Mrs. Cohen, you really ought to make sure your child eats less and exercises more, and I think that sort of tells you something about the frustration that doctors have with this, that there really isn't so much that they can do when a child is overweight, besides encourage those very obvious things. There is no magic pill.

PHILLIPS: That's right, because we go for a checkup once a year, at least for the kids. If we know our child is a bit overweight or struggling with obesity, I mean, should our child go to the doctor more than once a year?

COHEN: One of the problems here, is that if you really want to know if your child is overweight, if you're not sure, if it's not obvious, you do have to go to the doctor, and the reason for that is, is that on the Internet, there are lots of good sites, like the CDC site, for example, that has calculators for adults. You put in your height and weight and it tells you whether or not you're overweight. That does not exist for kids. What they have, is they have this conglomeration of charts, like this one here, there's' blue for boys, and then there are ones that are pink for girls, and they're different for different ages, and then there's a whole other chart that you use to calculate a BMI, and have you to plot age versus height versus weight. I tried to do it for my own children, and I couldn't figure it out. So you can't figure it out on your own if you're not quite sure of your child.

If your 6-year-old weighs 200 pounds, obviously you have a weight problem. There's no place for parents to go, gee, I think they're a little bit heavy, but I'm not sure.

PHILLIPS: So you're saying that our child could look normal weight wise, but really is obese.

COHEN: And the use of the word normal is what's so important here. There have been studies that shown that parents have said, gee, little Billy is fine, he's not overweight, when in fact little Billy is 10 pounds overweight. The issue is that Billy just looks like his friends, who are also overweight. As more and more kids become overweight, they just sort of start to look like their peers, and that misleads parents into thinking everything is OK when it isn't. Eyeball something not always the best way.

PHILLIPS: We have so much to worry about, yet this is one more thing.

COHEN: This is a big one. If they're big as a child they're big as an adult. That leads to all sorts of health problems.

PHILLIPS: Elizabeth Cohen, Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com