Obesity in kids is on track for soaring like mad; one in six kids will be literally fat by 2050.
It’s not about looks; it’s about body AND brain health.
This is the generation in which obese kids and adolescents, more than ever, are being led to believe that their fatness is perfectly okay, that they’re “perfect just the way you are.”
When overweight kids are told this, they know precisely that “you are” refers to their size, not their personality, skillset, talents or intelligence.
This approach can only harm their bodily and mental health.
By 2050, one in six kids and adolescents around the world will be obese.
This alarming forecast, published in The Lancet, suggests that if action is not taken soon, the problem will continue to worsen, potentially creating a public health crisis.
Actually, there’s been action for many years, but in the past 10 years or so, it’s been stunted by the massive traction of the fat acceptance movement, which is most prevalent on TikTok, followed by Instagram.
But fat acceptance also takes place offline by the very content creators and influencers who preach that obesity doesn’t cause health problems.
They insist that any disease processes are mostly a random occurrence and/or are caused by society’s preference for the thin body over the hefty body leading to mental harm in overweight individuals.
The Research
The research, led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, found that within the next 25 years, a third of kids and adolescents — approximately 385 million — will be overweight, and 360 million will be obese.
Obesity is when a person, regardless of age, is at least 20% over their ideal weight zone.
In kids and tweens, a higher-than-normal weight would be that of fat rather than muscle, since children and adolescents can’t put on the muscle mass (which weighs more than fat) that older teens and adults can.
In short, a heavy child is heavy due to fat, not muscle.
A heavy child is heavy due to fat, not muscle.
The study shows that 356 million children 5-14 and 390 million 15-24 will face weight challenges by 2050.
As of 2021, nearly half a billion young people worldwide were already overweight or obese.
What makes this all the more striking is that worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, about 828 million people (all ages) are affected by hunger from food shortages.
The global obesity rate for those between five and 24 tripled from 1990 to 2021.
This sharp rise, from 50 million to 174 million, points to a failure in current strategies to curb obesity among kids and young adults.
According to Dr. Jessica Kerr from MCRI, if urgent action isn’t taken between 2025 and 2030, the future looks grim for today’s young people. In the report, Dr. Kerr says that “obesity rarely resolves after adolescence.”
Attempts to Fix a Health Crisis Is Not “Fatphobia”
The health consequences of obesity are severe and long-lasting.
The limelight is typically taken by type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and cancer.
But obesity also leads to respiratory issues, fertility problems, miscarriage, deep vein thrombosis and impaired cognitive function.
Being fat impairs mental function?
Obesity in children can impair cognitive function through several mechanisms, including inflammation, insulin resistance and altered brain structure.
Excess fat leads to chronic low-grade inflammation, which can affect brain regions involved in memory and learning, such as the hippocampus (Gao et al., 2019).
Next, obesity-induced insulin resistance can impair brain glucose metabolism, reducing energy available for cognitive processes (Brock et al., 2017).
Also, obese kids tend to have reduced gray matter volume, which is crucial for cognitive abilities like decision-making and memory (Tremblay et al., 2016).
Stopping the Spread of Childhood Obesity
There have been efforts to stunt the spread of smoking and vaping among youth.
These efforts have received very little criticism, and most of it has been from Big Tobacco and vaping companies.
But the war on childhood obesity has relatively recently been met with a big clash from TikTok and Instagram content creators and influencers who want everyone to believe that fatness does not affect a child’s health – even when they waddle and can’t play with other kids due to difficulty with stamina.
Dr. Kerr has called for a national effort to establish surveillance surveys for childhood and adolescent obesity in every country.
These surveys are critical to monitoring the spread of obesity and guiding public health interventions.
One population in particular that should be a focus is females between 15-24 years, especially those nearing reproductive age.
This group is key to preventing the intergenerational transmission of obesity, as their health problems can affect the next generation.
Professor Susan Sawyer of MCRI emphasized that governments need to get involved in addressing the root causes of obesity.
Dr. Sawyer argues for government intervention through measures like taxing sugary drinks, banning junk food ads aimed at kids and funding healthy meals in schools.
The study also recommends overhauling urban planning to discourage a sedentary lifestyle and boost enthusiasm for physical activity.
