FitnessMantra Weekend: Even Overweight Kids Feel Social Stigma

Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

Overweight adults are often used to the inevitable riling that they undergo at the hands of their friends. Most take it as part of leading a life of excess and learn, albeit over time, to react appropriately and not let it “get to them”. Often humorous repartees are kept handy to deal with just such a situation and in most cases both the teaser ad the “teasee” know that it’s all in fun.

But now think about a similar situation, except that the person being targeted for being overweight is not a fully mature adult but a child, sometimes as young as three! “Overweight kids face widespread stigma” describes just such a situation and some of the possible dire consequences of this social rejection and peer-induced bullying or teasing:

Youngsters who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.

And the icing on the cake?

“The quality of life for kids who are obese is comparable to the quality of life of kids who have cancer,” Rebecca M. Puhl, of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said, citing one study.

It’s interesting how stereotypical impressions of social acceptance are formed at really young ages (for example, kids as young as 3 were shown to rank overweight kids last among a group of kids whom they were likely to befriend!).

Childhood obesity is indeed a growing problem with 50% of U.S. kids likely to be overweight by 2010, but solving the problem might become all the more difficult if we also have to deal with the mental anguish that can arise from unchecked social discrimination.
Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:

1. Poor ‘do not have a worse diet’: People on low incomes have similar diets to the rest of the population, a government report has said.
2. Few kids walk, bike to school: Fewer than half of American children who live close to school regularly walk or ride a bike to classes, according to a new study that highlights a dramatic shift toward car commuting by kids.
3. Drinking milk cuts diabetes risk: Drinking a pint of milk a day may protect men against diabetes and heart disease, say UK researchers.
4. Fat taxes ‘could save thousands’: More than 3,000 fatal heart attacks and strokes could be prevented in the UK each year if VAT was slapped on a vast range of foods, say Oxford researchers.
5. Overweight kids face stigma, unhappy lives: Overweight children are stigmatized by their peers as early as age 3 and even face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes.
6. Tomato study yields confusing results: Tomatoes don’t really help prevent cancer after all. Yet at the same time, perhaps they do. So say the confusing results of a new study
7. Efforts needed to curb maternal obesity: Physicians need to be aggressively counseling women about the importance of starting pregnancy at a healthy weight, says a U.S. expert.
8. Fat switch may offer new obesity approach: Helping switch on an energy-burning type of fat called brown fat may offer a way to prevent obesity, researchers reported on Tuesday.
9. Dearth of Vitamin D Is Common in Kids: Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have found that 55 percent of otherwise healthy children and teenagers they tested had inadequate amounts of vitamin D in their blood.
10. Yo-yo dieting may have a bad rap: Myths that tie weight cycling to greater regain at the waist or to increased difficulties in future weight loss attempts are unfounded, according to the National Institutes of Health.
11. Restaurant Calorie Counts: Not sure of the nutritional information in your restaurant food? Here’s some help.
12. Unhealthy Truckers Try to Shape Up: Truckers are more at risk than average Americans for a number of health problems. Obesity is rampant. Many don’t bother to wear seatbelts because their stomachs get in the way.
13. Cancer Risk Higher With Western Diet: Older Chinese women who eat a Western-style diet loaded with meats and sweets appear to have a greater risk for breast cancer than women who eat mainly soy and vegetables, a new study has concluded.

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Have a great weekend!

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