Miami – The mistaken but widespread belief among U.S. Hispanics that a chubby baby is a healthy one, the forsaking of healthy foods such as tortillas for burgers and fries and lack of exercise are among factors making Latino children in the United States the most obese young people in the world, an expert here says.
Obesity among Hispanic children living in the United States has become a real “pandemic,” with the phenomenon surging through the population in recent years.
Some 39.3 percent of Latino children between ages 6 and 11 in the United States are overweight, compared to 26.2 percent of non-Hispanic whites in that age range. Among Hispanic adolescents from 12-19, 43.8 percent are overweight.
There has been a “real explosion of obesity” that has made Latinos, “from preschool age to adolescence, the most obese (people) in the world,” pediatrician and dietician Claudia Gonzalez told EFE.
With the aim of alerting the Hispanic population to the serious epidemic and orienting parents and educators to combat it, Gonzalez has just published “Gordito no significa saludable” (Chubby doesn’t mean healthy), in which she performs an in-depth analysis of Latino cultural factors that bear on the issue.
With a degree in dietetics and nutrition from Miami’s Florida International University, Gonzalez makes a devastating dianosis: the Latino “cultural factor” is one of the main causes of obesity among Hispanic kids.
She said that abandoning the “Latino diet” and cultural errors like believing that “a baby or a child under 5 who is chubby is cute and healthy” are responsible for the increase in obesity among Hispanic children.
In addition, she lamented the fact that in Latino families “more attention is (still) paid to what the mother or grandmother says than to what the pediatrician says.”
Hispanic parents, the Peruvian-born Gonzalez said, are not aware that a “chubby child today has a 70 percent greater chance of being an obese adult.”
What is even more serious, “six of every 10 obese Latino children suffer from Type 2 diabetes,” an alarming figure, she said.
Gonzalez said that the predisposition to suffer from diabetes is in line with the “genetic tendency” for Latino children to become obese.
She said that the fight against child obesity demands that Hispanic parents learn that “asthma, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as serious psychological disorders” are regular consequences of obesity.
Gonzalez also said that the “loss of the Latino diet” – which includes beans, fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and corn tortillas – and youngsters living too much of a “sedentary life” are deciding factors in whether or not they become obese.
“Latino children watch more hours of television per day than all other U.S. children,” she said, adding that there is a direct relationship between being overweight and hours of TV watched.
In Gonzalez’s opinion, a comprehensive plan against childhood obesity must involve the schools, where there has been an alarming increase in the sale and consumption of sugar-laden soft drinks and junk food.
But in the end, she said, it is the parents who must “plan the health of their children, their daily nourishment and their physical activity.”
In addition to bad eating habits and the lack of daily exercise, Gonzalez emphasized the “absence of a system of preventive medicine” as another cause of the increase in childhood obesity among Hispanic kids.
“The majority of Hispanic parents don’t have medical insurance” and take their kids to the doctor only when “the situation is totally out of control or the child already has the symptoms of diabetes,” she said.
