|
2003
The Taipei Times Italian
kids pose big problem for health officials YOUTHFUL FLAB: More than a
third of Italy's kids aged 6 to 11 are obese, a startling number ascribed to
indulgent parents and a more sedentary lifestyle Big.
That's how many Italians sum up their impressions of the US -- from the Grand
Canyon to the jumbo burgers to the backsides. But
Italians no longer have to cross an ocean to gape at flab. This
country of the good-for-your-waistline Mediterranean diet has somehow produced a
generation of chubby children -- among Europe's fattest -- who have doctors
worried about the nation's health future. "In
the 20 years of my practice, the number of overweight and obese children has
increased enormously," said Andrea Vania, a pediatric nutritionist in Rome.
He
said he sees patients as young as 5 with weight problems. "We never used to
see this." Curiously,
southern European children in general are far chubbier than their counterparts
in the north, whose traditional diets are fatty ones. Experts
say the blame for the extra kilos is twofold. Not
only have Southern Europeans increasingly abandoned traditional diets rich in
vegetables, fruits and grains for fatty ones, but also indulgent parents are
letting children lead some of the most sedentary lifestyles in Western Europe. "You
[Americans] colonized us. Italian children don't follow the Mediterranean diet
any more," said Margherita Caroli, an expert in pediatrics and diet and a
member of the European Child Obesity Task Force. While
calories are mounting, calorie-burning is not. "Italian
mammas coddle their children," said Caroli, who is based in southern Italy.
Italian youngsters of a generation ago whiled away the hours kicking soccer balls. Now they're being enrolled by their parents in computer courses or English lessons. And
while grandparents might have walked children to school a few decades back when
cars were scarce in postwar Italy, students these days are driven to school, or,
if they're old enough, zip there on their own motorscooters. Surveys
of European young-sters' daily physical activity have found that Italian and
Portuguese children are the least active, said Laura Rossi, a researcher at
Italy's national nutrition institute INRAN. Italians
are eating more meat and moving away from Mediterranean staples such as pasta,
rice and barley. In
the years right after World War II, many Italians went hungry and "meat was
seen as a luxury that was good for you," Rossi said. The
notion still sticks. The first question many Italian mothers ask their children
after school is, "Did you eat your meat today?" Children's
midmorning snacks used to be simple foods, like focaccia, a kind of chewy bread.
Jumbo bags of greasy potato chips are the current playground status-symbol. Thirty-six
percent of Italian children aged 6 to 11 are overweight, compared with 34
percent in Spain, 31 percent in Greece, 20 percent in England, 15 percent in
Denmark and 13 percent in Finland, said Caroli. She
was citing figures compiled by pediatric and nutrition experts over the past
five years in the European nations and furnished to the task force for a study
to be published soon. Vania
"prescribes" activity and dietary changes for his young patients,
among them Azzurra Cariola, who was 10 years old and 57kg when she asked her
mother to take her to a doctor. "The
kids made fun of me. They called me `fatso,"' said Azzurra, now 14, in high
school and no longer overweight. Her
mother, Anna Maria D'Angelo, said Azzurra used to wolf down cookies when at
friends' homes. D'Angelo quit preparing traditional vegetable dishes for her
family because she was the only one who would eat them. Vania
said many parents resist the label of overweight for their children. "Children with a little bit of fat on them are considered cute and healthy," said Vania, who practices in a country where the command "Mangia!" (Eat!) is often equated with maternal love. |