Child Obesity

Did you know that a can of soda contains 10 teaspoons of sugar? No parent would give their child a glass of water with 10 teaspoons of sugar; yet that's what you're doing each time you open a can of pop.

We can no longer wait until our children "grow out of their baby fat". Unfortunately, today's kids keep their baby fat and continue to add to it throughout their lives.

Pediatricians have long feared that the rising number of severely obese children and teens would soon start to suffer from adult complications of obesity, like heart attacks, strokes, and death. And now it is happening.

As Congress continues to fine-tune its health care plan, the cost of the obesity epidemic, in terms of both human life and dollars, is becoming more evident and severe.

If Congress is going to tackle health care, it needs to understand why so many children and adults are in such poor shape. First off, every child in every school deserves a healthful lunch every day.

For this week's episode of CBS Doc Dot Com, I went to Camp Shane, listed on their Web site as "the original, longest running weight loss camp in the world" at 41 years and counting.