Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic nationwide that is blamed for a steady uptick in youth-onset diabetes and that can lead to chronic illnesses in adulthood, according to researchers.

Thanks to various reports, New Mexico knows that nearly 30 percent of its high school students and a quarter of 2- to 5-year-olds enrolled in a government program are overweight or obese. But the state Department of Health plans to fill in data gaps this fall when it begins to collect the body mass index levels for kindergarteners and third graders at 50 elementary schools, with an expectation of expanding the program to 50 new schools each year.

While quick to praise  the state’s plan this week, local officials, advocates and parents said this week they already know it’s a problem and they’re anxious for more help now.

“A lot more work needs to be done,” Cheryl Lucero, the incoming president of the Albuquerque’s Zia Elementary Parents Teachers Association, said of New Mexico’s efforts.

For starters, New Mexico doesn’t supplement federal funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture School Meal program with its own dollars, as other states do. The extra funding could help schools buy more fresh fruit and vegetables for school meals, said Jennie McCary, wellness manager at Albuquerque Public Schools.

New Mexico also could throw its support behind the Farm to School initiative, a program that gives preference to local growers to get fresh produce into schools, advocates say. It’s an idea that’s being pushed by the New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council.

Sugary beverages could be taxed to dissuade their consumption, said Erin Marshall, executive director of the New Mexico Healthier Weight Council. State lawmakers should expect to see that idea pushed during the 2011 legislative session. The council and other advocates plan to press that issue after the proposal surfaced but failed during this year’s legislative session.

Changes at the local level also could help, advocates say.

“It could be as simple as leaving gates unlocked” at school playgrounds so neighborhood children can play there during weekends and get more exercise, Marshall said.

“Other schools have community gardens,” she added. “Some schools have opened their facilities basketball courts – for children.”

Marshall’s group already is working to start a clearinghouse of sorts of “better practices” that will feature ideas from school districts and communities that have adopted healthful ideas to help foster greater communication among New Mexico’s communities.

“If Moriarty is doing something that works for them, would it work out in Magdalena?” Marshall asked.

Childhood obesity can lead to expensive health problems in adulthood

Childhood obesity is a large issue with a rising public profile, advocates and officials say.

The health risks associated with it are immense. Obesity at a young age can lead to the onset of diabetes during youth. And numerous government reports say obese and overweight children are likelier to suffer from chronic diseases such as heart disease, certain cancers and diabetes as adults, adding to the costs of health care.

As in the rest of the nation, childhood obesity rates appear to be growing in New Mexico.

The obesity rate for New Mexico’s children ages 2 to 5 years who participate in the Women Infants Children government program increased by nearly 30 percent from 2000 to 2007, going from 9 percent to 12.7 percent, according to a July 2009 state report titled Healthy Kids Healthy New Mexico.

Expanded waistlines are in greater evidence among older children too. In 2007 24.4 percent New Mexico’s high school students were overweight or obese, according to the same report. Two years later, the portion of high school students who were overweight or obese had increased to nearly 30 percent, according to a 2009 state Department of Health report titled Youth Resiliency and Risk Survey.

McCary of Albuquerque Public Schools confirms a similar finding among students in the state’s largest school district.

“We’re matching national numbers,” she said of the 25,000 Albuquerque Public School students whose body-mass index has been collected by the state’s largest school district in recent years.

Tough times for tackling childhood obesity

The state’s push to gauge the size of the problem comes at a time when budget pressures have cut deeply into health spending, rendering proposals like extra state dollars to help pay for school meals a tough sell to state lawmakers.

Funding for 33 county and community health councils and five Tribal Health Councils around the state has been slashed, a big hit to battling childhood obesity.

The councils “coordinate different agencies, organizations, in a community or county, that are addressing health needs at the local level,” Marshall said. “They are critical for addressing obesity.”

Mary Jo Quintana, for one, says the state needs to set its priorities and tackling childhood obesity should  be high up on its list.

A school parent with two children at Sunset View Elementary in Albuquerque, Quintana, like Lucero, sits on the Albuquerque Public Schools’ Physical Activity and Nutrition Advisory Committee.

“What they keep saying as we meet is it’s more than obesity,” Quintana said. “This also affects the graduation rates. There’s a strong tie in. It’s all connected. If we can get healthier children we can come up with better test results.”

Still, Quintana is thankful to see the state moving on the issue, even if it’s to get a better sense of how prevalent childhood obesity is.

“The state getting involved will help us,” Quintana said. ”We’re trying to move a mountain and they are helping us move that mountain faster. They are providing a lot of support.”

Obama announced the initiative Monday at a press conference; President Obama also signed a memorandum to create a task force on childhood obesity, embedded here:

Task Force on Child Obesity

According to a press release from the White House, the FDA will be launching new labeling that is more consumer friendly and offers parents better access to nutrition information, including labels on beverages of up to 20 ounces that include the total calories in a bottle, rather than calories in a small serving size.

The White House communique also announced a Healthy Food Financing Initiative, part of the President’s proposed 2011 budget, “a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services that will invest $400 million a year to help bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places such as convenience stores and bodegas carry healthier food options.”

Much of the discussion at the White House press conference focused on access to organic foods, community gardens and farmers markets, ideas that are moving away from the fringe and into the mainstream.

According to the White House, Americans spend $147 billion in medical costs each year due to obesity related illnesses. Let’s Move aims to take that money out of the back-end and move it toward the prevention of disease and the health of American children.

Here is Michelle Obama explaining her initiative:

Banning fast-food commercials on kids’ TV shows would reduce childhood obesity by 18 percent says a study published this month in the University of Chicago’s Journal of Law & Economics. According to the study, 23 percent of the food-related ads kids see are for fast food.

Childhood obesity is now the most common chronic disease among children, affecting more than 30 percent of kids, according to the Obesity Action Coalition. And the rate is growing quickly; it has more than tripled since 1980.

But as The New York Times reports:

“There is not a lot of evidence that overweight kids are more likely to watch TV than other kids,” said Michael Grossman, professor of economics at the City University of New York. “We’re arguing the causality is how many messages are aired — seeing more of these messages is leading people to put on weight.”

The Times also points out that since the data for these studies was gathered in the 1990s, Burger King and McDonald’s have both agreed to only advertise healthier products — such as Happy Meals that include apples and milk — to children. Of course, what that story leaves out is that the apples and milk are part of a meal that includes deep-fried chicken nuggets.

There is little hope that the government would ban fast-food advertising to children, even in an Obama administration and with Henry Waxman in charge of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Pushback from the fast-food industry, dutifully reported by Fox News, is that the study is based on old information and that parents have control over what their kids eat, not kids themselves.

But other research has clearly shown that commercials influence kids’ food preferences. And all parents know that when it comes to food fights, kids are formidable opponents.