The article "An all-consuming subject," July 16, was an excellent overview of the problem of childhood obesity and deserves a much longer treatment or series of articles. The photos published in the online edition were stunning. This is an important issue that has become a public health crisis.
The prevalence of diabetes, which dramatically increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, visual impairments, the need for kidney dialysis, and limb amputations due to infections, has more than doubled throughout the country.
In Bethlehem, the school administration reports that students are able to make their own healthy nutritional choices when they are offered amidst daily pizza, fries and coffee.
If this were true, it's unlikely that more than one in four children in Bethlehem would be overweight or obese, or, astoundingly, more than one in two children in Watervliet.
We know that children, including teenagers, are not yet developmentally able to make sound judgments about issues with far-reaching consequences. That is why they are not allowed to drive, vote or buy alcohol or cigarettes.
In the past, we have ignored the far-reaching consequences of unhealthy foods, which has brought us to the place we are today. School lunch programs, including Bethlehem which has resisted it, must become a part of the solution by adhering to good evidence-based nutritional practices rather than leaving it to our children.We have the right and responsibility to insist on it.
Marietta
Angelotti, M.D.
Delmar