An Obesity Epidemic

I was reading some back magazine issues today and found an article in a Ladies' Home Journal Magazine that gave these statistics:

• 16% of 6 to 19 year olds are overweight, triple the proportion in 1980
• 43% of adolescents watch more than 2 hours of tv each day, with additional time spent on computer and video games
• Only 31% of parents of obese children are aware that their children are very overweight
• 71% of ninth graders take physical education , compared with 40% of 12th graders
• Being overweight increases a teen's chance of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and depression

Scary stuff. I have no idea how those numbers compare to adult statistics, but I'm sure that that those are high too. In our culture it's so easy to be sedentary, and so hard to change once you're there...