Doesn't care much for schools.

I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

AbbeySomeone: I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

I think it's safe to say these kids mentioned in the article don't have parents. They have sperm/egg donors that are either negligent or abusive.

Holy shiat, what kind idiot would allow their 13-year-old to hit the 256lb mark, much less 400?

Obese people are like drug addicts. People with no self control on a self destructive path that society as a whole ends up footing in the end. The only difference is there is no criminal element involved, and even vagrants can be obese in America.

AbbeySomeone: I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

On the plus side, there are a lot of frustrated knife-wielding clowns out there.

Roly poly, Daddy's little fattie...

Should we be shaming obese children more?

In my opinion, yes.

Fark_Guy_Rob: AbbeySomeone: I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

I think it's safe to say these kids mentioned in the article don't have parents. They have sperm/egg donors that are either negligent or abusive.

THIS.

It's also talking about kids like this in DC, so anyone hoping to score cheap points from it being evil white Republican parents doing this in West Alexandria and Burke in Fairfax county should expect to be disappointed.

The My Little Pony Killer: Holy shiat, what kind idiot would allow their 13-year-old to hit the 256lb mark, much less 400?

Fat parents have fat kids.

The Spartans would shove these socially useless types down the big deep well, but then I suppose the well would fill up quickly..........

my lip balm addiction: AbbeySomeone: I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

I blame the GOP. Look at the biatchfest they put on when Michelle Obama wanted to get kids eating healthier. She instantly became this shrewish troll in their eyes despite all facts and evidence to the contrary.

/fark the GOP fatties
//may you all die in an Oreo-encrusted Hell

I don't have a problem with Michelle getting the kids healthier meals in school. Great. I have a problem where she encourages schools to write policies that prohibit kids from bringing their own meals. I have an ultra high metabolism. I'm 6'4", 141 lbs. I need a lot of calories in my diet during the day and I struggled with that in school on the days they served "healthy" meals.

D_Evans45: Obese people are like drug addicts. People with no self control on a self destructive path that society as a whole ends up footing in the end. The only difference is there is no criminal element involved, and even vagrants can be obese in America.

If a heroin addict quits doing heroin within a few weeks all he has are memories and track marks. A carb-addict cuts out the sugars and starches and they're still fat six weeks later. So, the comparison is false.

jayphat: I have a problem where she encourages schools to write policies that prohibit kids from bringing their own meals.

When has that ever happened?

Today, Hancock is examining Derek Lyles, 13. He's 4 feet 11 inches and weighs 256 pounds... Derek says other students often called him fat in middle school.

Those other students should be lauded for their keen skills of observation.

TFA: This summer, Derek could eat whenever he wanted, and the fridge was always stocked with food. At school, he says, he ate cereal or a muffin for breakfast. But over the summer, he often ate sausage and eggs. The pounds piled on.

And this is why we have these sorts of problems. It's not 'politically correct' these days to point it out, but this isn't a 'issue' to be 'managed'. The important concern here shouldn't be helping the fat kids learn to 'deal' with being fat or worrying about their sensitive little feelings being hurt because people point out that they look like whales, it should be to help them stop being fat so that they can live normal lives. Unfortunately it's not fashionable to point out that these kids have serious problems because their parents are farking morons who shouldn't be allowed to raise goldfish, let alone a kid, so the problem continues.

This article is cruel. Now there's parents of obese children hiding in the closet, eating a candy bar while crying. I hope you're proud of yourselves.

my lip balm addiction: So because you have a farked up metabolism, everyone has to suffer? That's mighty white of you.

So because some kids can't control their weight, everyone else has to suffer?

Margarinalized?

my lip balm addiction: AbbeySomeone: I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

I blame the GOP. Look at the biatchfest they put on when Michelle Obama wanted to get kids eating healthier. She instantly became this shrewish troll in their eyes despite all facts and evidence to the contrary.

/fark the GOP fatties
//may you all die in an Oreo-encrusted Hell

Stop the Democrat nut hugging. It isn't a political party issue, dude. There are plenty of fat ass Democrats. The problem isn't so much school lunches, it is the fact HFCS is in everything and the lack of moving around these days.

And shouldn't it be "margarinealized?"

The My Little Pony Killer: Holy shiat, what kind idiot would allow their 13-year-old to hit the 256lb mark, much less 400?

I know, distantly, a young woman who was around 400 lbs by the time she was 18.

The entire family is morbidly obese, living on processed convenience foods mostly, treating exercise as a four-letter-word. When it's time for actual cooking, it's lots of corn, potatoes, and pasta, in bulk, and most everything is fried.

She ate when she was bored. She ate when she was lonely, she ate when she didn't know what else to do. The rest of the family was not much better off. I sometimes call them "The Hutt Clan".

Her patients include a 13-year-old who weighs 400 pounds; a child whose teeth are so rotted she can't bite into carrots; and many preteens who are diabetic. Today, Hancock is examining Derek Lyles, 13. He's 4 feet 11 inches and weighs 256 pounds.

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AbbeySomeone: I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

Actually, some recent studies (too lazy to pull up a link, but they're real) have suggested pretty strongly that exercise isn't particularly closely connected to weight gain or loss- most of the calories you use are used for cellular maintenance and replacement and whatnot, and the percentage burned for energy is actually pretty low, and pretty consistent across various activity levels (they worked with a tribe of hunter-gatherers in Africa to get this- this isn't a study of desk jockeys versus slightly more active college students). Basically, you can shock your system for temporary gain by dramatically changing your exercise level, but you're not going to be able to sustain those losses long term, unless you're on the far end of the bell curve (we're talking Micheal Phelps here, and if he stops those insane workouts, he's gonna balloon very quickly).

The conclusion? Diet, diet, diet. Your diet drives your metabolism, your diet drives what raw material is there for your body to work with- some stuff basically goes straight to fat (surprisingly, fat's not included there, we're talking some classes of sugars- apart from cholesterol, most fats aren't particularly bad for you), some stuff, like alcohol, has to be burned off and never really contributes energy to anything, which is why it saps you of energy- in burning it, your body is getting a lot less useful energy per calorie than it gets with real food- which is also why those calorie counts for hard liquor are more or less useless. Vitamins come into play to help your metabolism as well, which is an excellent reason to eat your veggies.

If you're fat, you need to fix your diet. Fattie in school's mother is either feeding him crap, or letting him feed himself crap. Cut the sugared up drinks down to a rare treat or never and watch the magic happen. Change the big macs to cans of reheated soup at home and all of a sudden, your 10 year old's blood pressure readings might stop resembling Donald Trump's.

Fat people are disgusting and it shows a basic character flaw so horrible that any exclusionary actions taken against them are more than justified.

WhippingBoy: The two most offensive words in the English language are "personal responsibility".

The least offensive phrase in American politics today is "We're taking away your freedom for your own good".

How are these people doing it?

You have to eat thousands of dollars of food per month to put on that kind of weight. I'm 6'3" eat 4500 calories per day and my weight has stabilized at around 200 lbs, (in stead of dropping like a rock when I cut back a little on food.). If I'm not careful to eat enough I find that after 4 or 5 days I burn through my body fat reserves and start loosing weight to about 165 at which point either my calorie intake has to go back up or I get lethargic and light headed as well as looking like skin and bones.

fluffy2097: Her patients include a 13-year-old who weighs 400 pounds; a child whose teeth are so rotted she can't bite into carrots; and many preteens who are diabetic. Today, Hancock is examining Derek Lyles, 13. He's 4 feet 11 inches and weighs 256 pounds.

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sounds like a body builder

Jon iz teh kewl: sounds like a body builder

If only you mean you could chop him into 4 pieces and end up with 4 normal sized children.

my lip balm addiction: AbbeySomeone: I blame the parents and a society so wrapped up in fear that a child can't walk or ride their bikes to school, or play outside.
TFA was both sad and disgusting.

I blame the GOP. Look at the biatchfest they put on when Michelle Obama wanted to get kids eating healthier. She instantly became this shrewish troll in their eyes despite all facts and evidence to the contrary.

/fark the GOP fatties
//may you all die in an Oreo-encrusted Hell

Exactly. No matter how serious the issues is -- e.g. global warming -- they politicize it, and nothing gets accomplished.

If anything, they should be praise Ms. Obama for not taking the obvious hardline regulatory approach to the problem (which ultimately, is going to be the only way this epidemic gets solved).

The bottom line, is what percentage of Americans needs to be obese before the GOP concedes that this is not going to be a problem that solves itself? 70%?

Shouldn't laugh but when reading the article a highlight for another NPR story showed up on the right: Americandy: Sweet Land Of Liberty: "We're taking a cross-country tour of candies from around the U.S., sampling hometown sweets that deliver a nostalgic sugar rush."

There is a kid on our cul de sac who is in fourth or fifth grade and is not allowed to leave it!! They must think the rest of us on the block are downright negligent. They probably think I am abusive as my 13 y/o takes his backpack and "survival gear" into the woods for the day to play. He and his friends build shelters, play in the woods, fish and swim in the bayou and ponds, trap rabbits, play king of the hill etc. This kid rides a bike in the circle for like five minutes before heading inside. He isn't allowed to play sports with the other boys because they don't wear safety gear (it's pick up games of basketball, football, baseball, and dodgeball for jeebus sake--not knife throwing). The kid is chubby and awkward. The parents actually had a talk with all the neighborhood boys about playing gently with him not horsing around--so of course he is completely ostracized now. I blame parents. I see a lot of kids whose every move is monitored or planned and many who are coddled to such an extent that they are not able to do much activity for fear of some sort of disabling injury....

Maxor: How are these people doing it?

You have to eat thousands of dollars of food per month to put on that kind of weight. I'm 6'3" eat 4500 calories per day and my weight has stabilized at around 200 lbs, (in stead of dropping like a rock when I cut back a little on food.). If I'm not careful to eat enough I find that after 4 or 5 days I burn through my body fat reserves and start loosing weight to about 165 at which point either my calorie intake has to go back up or I get lethargic and light headed as well as looking like skin and bones.

Fat people, pretty invariably, have an insanely skewed sense of what normal portions are. You'll hear a lot of fat people wondering why they're so fat, saying things like, "But I eat what normal people eat!". They don't. When independent observers come in, it turns out they're eating portions of unhealthy crap that normal people would be utterly astonished by.

And it is utter crap. These people are also generally utterly clueless about nutrition. Granted, most people are, but most people heard the constant refrain about eating balanced meals and know what a vegetable is, and wind up stumbling into something that's not utterly awful for you. If somebody is morbidly obese, it's pretty safe to assume that everything in their diet is sugary, processed crap.

Eat a balanced diet. Eat real food. It's that farking simple, and everything else will follow.

The My Little Pony Killer: jayphat: I have a problem where she encourages schools to write policies that prohibit kids from bringing their own meals.

When has that ever happened?

From the First Lady? Never.

He's conflating her with an out of control principal that never actually did it and unfortunately the press release clarifying wtf was going on from the school has been nearly scoured from the internet, and the only full copy is a post in a fark threadabout it.

Page 19 has another reference to that letter.

Want to know how to get kids eating new fruits and veggies? Offer them as snacks starting in Kindergarten, and continue that new produce snack time throughout elementary school. It's not going to fix things over night.

Sadly, our elementary school jog-a-thon fund raiser has been getting less and less money, because the kids can't do as many laps as in years past.

Gwyrddu: Should we be shaming obese children more?

In my opinion, yes.

No, we should be shaming their ignorant, abusive parents.

The most obese child I have ever seen was an 11-year-old who weighed 460 lbs. I'm dead serious. He came to medical attention when he caught a hideous pneumonia and nearly died.

I would love to see all these subsidies for meat, dairy, corn, and other foodstuffs that we Americans consume FAR too much of ended and traded for broccoli, bean, and lentil subsidies. Stop making shiatty food cheap, and make the stuff that's better for you cost less. Enhance distribution of vegetables to inner cities (easier when it's cheap). Why we, as a society, allow the government to spend money to overproduce crap that makes people obese escapes me. Especially when we then turn around and whine that everyone's too fat and the government needs to fix it.

I had some friends that weighed 240-250 when we were 13. Of course, they were over 6 feet tall.

cptjeff: Actually, some recent studies (too lazy to pull up a link, but they're real) have suggested pretty strongly that exercise isn't particularly closely connected to weight gain or loss- most of the calories you use are used for cellular maintenance and replacement and whatnot, and the percentage burned for energy is actually pretty low, and pretty consistent across various activity levels (they worked with a tribe of hunter-gatherers in Africa to get this- this isn't a study of desk jockeys versus slightly more active college students). Basically, you can shock your system for temporary gain by dramatically changing your exercise level, but you're not going to be able to sustain those losses long term, unless you're on the far end of the bell curve (we're talking Micheal Phelps here, and if he stops those insane workouts, he's gonna balloon very quickly).


But you are assuming that weight loss is the ultimate goal, when the ultimate goal should be to become healthy as possible. In that regard, exercise is more important than just the effect of weight control. People can be a normal weight and unhealthy if they don't exercise, or they can be overweight and still in good health if they exercise regularly.

A couple of things is that I don't think are addressed is first off that muscle burns energy even at rest (and weighs more than fat incidentally), so that needs to be added to the equation for the effects of exercise. Secondly, no mention is made of the effects of exercise of appetite control.

Altogether, if your goal is to really become healthier, diet and exercise should be used in conjunction, instead of it being one or the other.