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I remember being under age 16 and there were only a few chunky kids at school. (there was usually a max of 5 to 8 in each grade level). They were either chunky until puberty and hit a growth spurt so their weight became more proportional or they saw some weight gain in their teenage years and it "hung around" during their high school years in form of what was then a little soft around the middle. But this new fat phenomenon with kids is at a crisis level! I had never noticed the extent of the crisis until this past weekend when my wife drug me to the mall. While waiting for my wife sitting on a mall bench for about 45 minutes, I witnessed flocks of "little debbie snack cake" muffin tops, "pre-beer" beer bellies, "I don't know love yet" love handles, and "I've never been in the saddle yet" saddle bags. What is this!!?? Our kids are huge! And they travel in packs!!! I will admit, I have a fully developed size 38 beer pudge earned after 4 years of incessant undergraduate frat keg parties; 2 years of grad school; roughly 5-7 years of happy hours; a crazy 4 year travel work schedule; a 10 year marriage; and a few years of just hanging out around the house with two kids. This is no excuse, but I'm nearly 40 and I'm back in the gym. These teen and pre-teen chunkers are traveling in packs with a parent or two in tow enabling them. I saw boys and girls across every demographic it was very troubling. I even saw one kid get upset because his mom said that he had already had two Cinnabons that day and he wanted another to take home. I immediately went home and said to my wife that we have to ensure that we help our very young children avoid this same plight. I had this conversation with my neighbors who have a couple of kids who have lets say "all of the above extra dimensions" under age 16. It felt weird at first, but they thanked me for pulling them into this conversation because they felt like it was the elephant in the room amongst many friends. The next day i saw them walking with their two teenage daughters. Lets start a revolution in Charlotte to begin change the habits of our children!
My daughter is normal weight, and so are her parents. All the kids in her grade are normal weight. And only one family in our neighborhood has pudgy kids.
Maybe it's a "mall thing". Or a suburban thing... A "drive-everywhere-you-go" thing? Which mall were you at?
Last edited by Native_Son; 08-24-2012 at 08:19 PM..
We were at Carolina Place Mall which tends to get a hodge podge of visitors and doesn't lean towards a particular kind of shopper. Perhaps it is more readily a surburban thing. My post was primarily motivated by similar observations at Target today at the Metropolitan where I witnessed enabling parents feeding their pudgy kids junk. And I have begun to take note of it more readily. I hasten to mention the vast majority of kids are still normal; however, the pudgy frequency has grown exponentially...pun intended.
I remember being under age 16 and there were only a few chunky kids at school. (there was usually a max of 5 to 8 in each grade level). They were either chunky until puberty and hit a growth spurt so their weight became more proportional or they saw some weight gain in their teenage years and it "hung around" during their high school years in form of what was then a little soft around the middle. But this new fat phenomenon with kids is at a crisis level! I had never noticed the extent of the crisis until this past weekend when my wife drug me to the mall. While waiting for my wife sitting on a mall bench for about 45 minutes, I witnessed flocks of "little debbie snack cake" muffin tops, "pre-beer" beer bellies, "I don't know love yet" love handles, and "I've never been in the saddle yet" saddle bags. What is this!!?? Our kids are huge! And they travel in packs!!! I will admit, I have a fully developed size 38 beer pudge earned after 4 years of incessant undergraduate frat keg parties; 2 years of grad school; roughly 5-7 years of happy hours; a crazy 4 year travel work schedule; a 10 year marriage; and a few years of just hanging out around the house with two kids. This is no excuse, but I'm nearly 40 and I'm back in the gym. These teen and pre-teen chunkers are traveling in packs with a parent or two in tow enabling them. I saw boys and girls across every demographic it was very troubling. I even saw one kid get upset because his mom said that he had already had two Cinnabons that day and he wanted another to take home. I immediately went home and said to my wife that we have to ensure that we help our very young children avoid this same plight. I had this conversation with my neighbors who have a couple of kids who have lets say "all of the above extra dimensions" under age 16. It felt weird at first, but they thanked me for pulling them into this conversation because they felt like it was the elephant in the room amongst many friends. The next day i saw them walking with their two teenage daughters. Lets start a revolution in Charlotte to begin change the habits of our children!
The "muffin top" is a national trend.
I've witnessed it in New York, Arizona and some states in between.
Set a good example for your kids, that's the best thing you can do for the future generation.
Chunk is a growing epidemic. It seems the lower middle income seem more prone to chunk then higher middle income. In the ritzy parts of town (uptown, university, ballantyne/providence, Dilworth, Arbors, etc) people seem to be skinnier then in the normal parts of town (wilkinson, independence, carolina place, etc.) there seems to be more chunkers.
Either way, we all need to be more healthy. Being skinny doesn't make u healthy neither. (I'm thin and lower middle class btw)
This isn't a Charlotte problem, it is a national problem. I recommend that you watch any old TV show or even better a documentary where there are upstaged crowds and you will see very few, if any, people who are over weight. This includes people of any age group. You don't have to go that far back.
It comes down to one thing (of which there are many reasons for it) people eat too much high calorie food and don't get enough exercise. This includes many kids and it's getting worse since as they are slowly being turned into lifeless dullards who look at some sort of LCD screen all day long instead of interacting with the surrounding environment. Want to test it? Take away the electronics from your kids for a week and watch what happens.
I have two personal observations.
I worked at McDonalds during highschool in the late 1970s. At that time we served two sizes of drinks a small and large. Today the small drink is now called a courtesy cup, and the large is now a small. This is the same for fries. What we called a large fry then, is now a regular. The new normal. A 1/4 pounder was considered a huge burger then. It was the whole reason for calling it that. Now we see burgers with 1/2 lb and even 3/4 of a pound of beef on them.Also in those days, a trip to McDonalds was considered a treat and people only went maybe a couple of times/month. Most food was consumed at home. Today fast food is a daily occurrence for many including kids.
I used to travel to Asia on and off, mainly to Japan. Each time I returned I am immediately struck when getting off the plane at how fat Americans are. Unfortunately I would add the word slob to it as well because in modern Asia and Europe people still dress nicely when seen in public for the most part. Here it's clown city in comparison.
I do think it is somewhat worse in the South and especially in cities like Charlotte because there is the lifestyle and the money in this city which makes it possible. It's also bad among people getting government assistance because you can spend foodstamps on the worst of foods. i.e. consumption. The media encourages us to be "consumers" and the word when you think about it, conjures up images of huge sloths engorging themselves on anything within reach. 40 years ago "doing" and "producing" were encouraged instead.
Why yes, it is a national problem but the South consistently has the highest rate of obesity as reported annually by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The West has the lowest rates of obesity, followed by the Northeast, the Midwest, then the South.
Go to Walmart and you will only see fitness freaks. No unhealthy people there. Seriously, it definately is not a Charlotte problem. The farther in the country one ventures, the heavier the people are. City people are thinner as they go to spas, walk, bike, and do things that enhance fitness. I live on the lake where most people look very fit. It mostly has to do with education (intelligence) and culture. The more expensive neighborhoods have the healthiest/fittest looking inhabitants based on the aforementioned, regardless of ethnicity.
This isn't a Charlotte problem, it is a national problem.
It's a national problem for sure, but it's more of a problem in the South than elsewhere. Still, our nation has become a punchline around the world where people perceive us as fat slobs. I was visiting a friend in France a number of years ago. Her photo album included pictures of fat Americans. I guess that's part of the American travel experience foreigners. I wish the nation would get serious about this obesity epidemic that, yes, seems to be getting worse with every generation. And it doesn't help that our young folks these days spend so much time sitting on their behinds playing with technology rather than being outdoors getting exercise like we did when I was growing up. Instead of playing tennis and baseball, they're pretending to play tennis and baseball with their Wii.
Quote:
Originally Posted by frewroad
I used to travel to Asia on and off, mainly to Japan. Each time I returned I am immediately struck when getting off the plane at how fat Americans are.
Absolutely! Whenever I return to the U.S. from being out of the country, it's culture shock returning to my own country. I remember a couple years ago when I returned from a trip to Turkey and Greece, I was stunned when I got off the plane and saw people wobbling around all over JFK Airport. I had already grown accustomed to normal-sized bodies. Once, when I was in Geneva, Switzerland, walking among the crowd of thin people, I saw a huge person off in the distance walking in my direction. I knew instinctively (sadly) that it had to be an American. Curiosity got the best of me and I directed my path so I would have to walk past him. As he got close to me, I saw that he was wearing a baseball cap and a Cape Hatteras t-shirt. Yep, just as I had suspected. And a few years ago I was in Bangkok, Thailand for a week. That entire week I saw a total of 5 overweight people. The sad thing is that 4 of those overweight people were tourists from the United States. The other one was a German.
For comparison's sake, consider this: 22.6% of Japanese are considered obese (i.e., have a BMI over 30%). In the U.S., it's 74.1%!
Quote:
Originally Posted by frewroad
I do think it is somewhat worse in the South and especially in cities like Charlotte because there is the lifestyle and the money in this city which makes it possible. It's also bad among people getting government assistance because you can spend foodstamps on the worst of foods. i.e. consumption.
There are a lot of factors going on here. For one, higher income people tend to be better educated and, thus, make better choices in the things they eat. But also, they can make better choices because they can afford to. Unfortunately, healthy food tends to be more expensive. Low income people buy what they can afford, which mostly means a lot of processed foods, foods loaded with carbs, and a lot of high fructose corn syrup. And the high fructose corn syrup is hard to avoid these days. 20 years ago, it was hardly found in any food product, now this cheap sweetener is in practically everything here. Another problem for low-income people is they work jobs with short lunch breaks, which forces a person to eat fast. There is a delay between the time the brain realizes the stomach is full and when it actually is. So when we eat fast, we tend to overeat.
Charlotte is ranked 9th fattest U.S. city. But again, the nation is fat, much fatter than the rest of the world. And they do make jokes about us and our weight. If Chris Christie ever runs for national office, I wish he would please, please drop some pounds. That, and shows like Mike & Molly, are not good role models for our kids. I don't mean to offend anybody, but this is serious stuff. We're killing ourselves in this country, and this younger generation coming up will have a diabetes and heart disease epidemic (and higher cancer rates), to go along with their current obesity epidemic. It all goes hand in hand.
Last edited by brichard; 08-25-2012 at 11:12 AM..
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