Increasingly children are developing a disease that has traditionally been more common among senior adults.
Type II diabetes is prevalent among children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s diabetes division. This is because too much fat from the wrong kinds of foods inhibits the ability of insulin to move glucose from the bloodstream into the body’s cells. The result is Type II diabetes.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) says that as the United States population continues on its track of more and more people becoming overweight, researchers expect Type II diabetes to show up more frequently in “younger, pre-pubescent children.”
Since Type II diabetes in children and adolescents is a relatively new phenomenon, accurate statistics regarding the number of cases have not been generated. However, the ADA states that recent reports indicate that 8 to 45 percent of children with newly diagnosed diabetes have Type II diabetes.
Dr. Neil Schaffner, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, explained that the wide percentage spread comes because Type II diabetics under the age of 10 are not as common, while a greater percentage of Type II diabetes in children ages 13–15 is increasingly common.
Schaffner, an endocrinologist, explained that the cumulative effect of young children — even kindergarten and early elementary ages — eating high fat, low nutrition foods like pizza, French fries, hotdogs and hamburgers, accounts for the higher percentage of kids in the age range of 13–15 getting Type II diabetes.
“Forty percent of school-age kids in America are morbidly obese, and it’s getting worse,” he said. “When you’re talking 40 percent of school- age kids being morbidly obese, the kinds of [disease] statistics that will appear for them 10–15 years from now are absolutely terrifying.”
He said that today it is common for coronary disease that used to show up in 40- to 50-year-olds to surface in people in their 20s. This is a direct result of bad eating habits in childhood and adolescence.
Diabetics, whether Type I or Type II, have increased risk of coronary disease, but these risks can be reduced with excellent daily control of blood sugar and diet.
“Some schools take the fast food route — hamburgers, pizza and chicken fingers — day after day. Other lunchrooms rotate their menus. You’ll spot the same foods served every third week, for example,” said Hope Warshaw, M.M.Sc., R.D., C.D.E., in a Juvenile Diabetes Foundation publication. Sadly, many church school cafeterias and church kitchens serve these and other nutritionally poor foods as main meals, catering to the appetites of children.
“Those [nutrition] issues are the major reasons that we’re seeing Type II diabetes in children today,” Warshaw said. “Even though the genetics were there [for diabetes 10–20 years ago], we never had it, because those [obesity and poor nutrition issues in children] were not commonplace.”
School and church cafeterias and parents can take several nutritional steps to reduce obesity in children. Bake instead of fry, and use canola or olive oil. Use whole wheat breads and buns exclusively (hot dog and hamburger buns are available in whole wheat), use ground turkey for a hamburger and use low-fat or fat-free wieners for hot dogs. Reduce the fat content of pizzas by choosing vegetable pizzas or make thinner crust from whole-wheat flour and use low-fat cheese. In any foods, reducing the portion size would help. Whole wheat, low-fat, fat-free and no-sugar items are found in all major grocery stores for about the same price as regular food items.
Though modern medicine is more prevalent in developed countries, the prevalence of diabetes is much more widespread in developed countries than in developing countries, according to the International Diabetes Foundation (IDF).
IDF cites four major causes of the rise: the aging of populations, unhealthy diets, obesity and sedentary lifestyles.
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