“My kids aren’t fat!”

The Canadian Medical Association (i.e., the physicians’ trade association) has got a ton of media coverage (here, here, & here) for the press release linked in the title.

That 26% (a quarter!) of Canadian kids are obese—not just overweight, but obese—is old news, but it never ceases to amaze me. The CMA release reveals, however, that only 9% of parents think their kids are fat.

monado and I spent a pleasant couple of days with our granddaughter at Blue Mountain Resort on Lake Huron, and I was continually surprised at how big the other visitors, and especially their children, were.

92% of Canadian parents (according to the CMA’s survey) support mandatory physical activity in school, but I’m not so certain that’s The Solution. In late middle age I’m very active, but I loathed phys.ed. in school, and that personal perspective makes me skeptical about bringing back mandatory phys.ed.

Frankly, I have no if-I-were-king solution. Each age cohort is chunkier than the one before: twenty-year-olds today are fatter than twenty-year-olds ten years ago, who were fatter than twenty-year-olds ten years before. The physics is simple: our energy budgets have grown ’way out of whack; we take in more calories than we expend. But I find it’s hard to believe it’s McDonald’s or HFCS or the lack of mandatory phys.ed. And it’s a worldwide phenomenon.