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Post by Mel Mel on Jul 27, 2007 20:27:12 GMT
As a vegetarian and the parent of a 10-year-old, I have tried to be very conscious of what my daughter eats. She started out as a vegetarian too, but by the time she was 7, the lure of burgers via fast food joints proved too much for her--especially when friends and classmates were reveling in their trips to McDonalds and Burger King. Needless to say it broke my heart.
As a journalist who covers medical issues I'm very aware of the fact that childhood obesity has reached near epidemic proportions in this country. Today, at least one in five children are overweight. And overweight kids tend to become overweight adults putting them at higher risk for high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. Not to mention type 2 diabetes, a disease that used to only occur in adults! According to the National Institutes of Health, if today's overweight kids become tomorrow's overweight adults, a staggering 50 million Americans could have diabetes by the year 2050....continued... www.cnn.com/HEALTH/blogs/paging.dr.gupta/2007/07/ad-giants-vow-to-curb-marketing-to-kids.html
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