March 12, 2010     The Huffington Post

Welcome to the inaugural blog post from Destination Casa Blanca, the Latino Voice in Politics, carried since 2008 on Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network, HITN. Each week I'll post some thoughts from the latest show, and of course we want you to talk back to your television set, answering with reactions and conclusions of your own.

This week's edition of the program dealt with juvenile obesity, its causes, and solutions. The terrific panel came from a variety of disciplines; epidemiology, social work, dentistry, and health disparities. The panelists were great at diagnoses, but the suggestions about what to do next were less than satisfying. It wasn't their fault: Americans of all ethnic groups have been pretty resistance to the long-understood public health messages concerning nutrition. 

Americans are fat. Latinos in America are fatter still, with almost one out of five Latino kids overweight, and some one out of six obese. There is some genetic predisposition to put on weight, that is, a physical tendency to get fatter than other people eating the same food. But the real problem, said our panelists, was not genetic but caloric. We eat too much food, too much of the wrong foods, and exercise too little. Aggravating factors for these food basics include schools serving fattening lunches, selling sugary drinks, and providing too few opportunities to exercise. 

So what's a country already dealing with the wrestling the world's highest health care bills supposed to do? Any attempt to tax junk food and sweet drinks brings out the heavy artillery from the powerful and well-funded snack foods and beverage industries. The struggle to keep us from digging our collective graves with a knife and fork and a straw is instead portrayed as Big-Brother style interference in personal liberty and another trespass from the creeping nanny state.

At the same time juvenile onset of adult diabetes is increasing, with the havoc it plays on bodies over time. Latinos, already overrepresented among the uninsured, suffer amputations and lost eyesight from untreated and undertreated diabetes at higher rates than other Americans. Obesity is robbing kids and adults of years of life, and countless happy and healthy years of work and leisure. 

As I noted in the show, there's really no controversy here. There is no one who is "pro-obesity." There is no "other side" to bring on to argue the upside of excessive eating, too little exercise, and a lifetime of higher health costs and lost work. 

But you can ask anyone who has ever tried to lose 10 or 20 pounds and keep them off how hard changing lifestyle and habits can be. Children are in an even tougher spot: They don't control what food schools serve in lunchrooms, what parents serve at home, or what small grocers carry for sale in their neighborhood markets. Habits of eating, exercise, and body care are often set in childhood. We owe these kids more than we're giving them.

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