• 1 in 5 American children are obese. This translates into 10 million kids.
• 35% of Texas school-aged children are overweight or obese. This equates to 1.4 million Texas kids.
• 56% of 8 year olds consume at least one soft drink everyday.
• 33% of adolescent boys drink 3 or more soft drinks each day.
• 27% of parents believe that their children eat less nutritionally than they did in their own childhood.
• Overweight teens are using smoking as a method of weight control.
• Children who are overweight at age 12 face a 75% chance of becoming overweight adults, putting them at risk for a host of serious long-term illnesses, including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, high blood pressure, gallbladder, asthma and certain cancers.
• About 17 million people in the United States currently have diabetes, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently projected that the lifetime risk of developing diabetes for children born in 2000 was more than 30% for males and almost 40% for females.
• Diabetes is the main cause of kidney failures, limb amputations and blindness in adults and a major cause of heart disease and stroke. A recent review showed that the life expectancy of a child who develops the disease before age 15 is reduced by 27 years.
• A University of California study showed that obese children often struggle with self-esteem and depression. They miss three or four times as much school as their normal-weight peers and are more likely to report feeling socially isolated.
• The Texas Comptrollers of Public Accounts estimates that there may be between 26,000 to 39,000 vending machines being operated in Texas schools. Even by a very conservative estimate, about $104 million in revenues are being generated by these vending machines, diverting sales that could go to the Student Nutrition Departments. It is also estimated that an additional $60 million in cafeteria sales is lost due to other competitive food sales. When students choose unhealthy snacks instead of a nutritious breakfast and or lunch from the cafeteria, they are hurting themselves, increasing their chances for long-term health problems and early death.
• The estimated cost of adult overweight and obesity in Texas was 10.2 billion in 2001. This includes an estimate of $4.1 billion for health care alone, and an additional $6.1 billion impact from lost productivity. This cost averages out to about $682 per adult Texan.
