Children are more overweight than ever, and what do we plan to do about it? Encourage overweight kids to be more active? Start monitoring what our children eat, so that we can steer them away from fatty foods in favor of a healthier, well balanced diet?

Yeah, maybe in Europe, clown.

What's the plan then? Gastric bypass surgeries for kids, of course!

According to this AP article, a group of four hospitals, led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, are beginning a study in the spring examining how children respond to various types of weight-loss surgery, including gastric bypass.

In some instances, like adults, I can see why the surgery is necessary. But, at the same time, altering the digestive system for children not even fully developed seems sort of, I don't know, like a bad idea. You should be old enough to drive before someone shrinks your stomach and places a band around it.

Look what someone had to say about the many adults currently flocking to doctors to get gastric bypass surgery:

"When we ask them, 'What have you done so far to lose weight?' The patients say, 'Nothing,'" Wadden said. "They're going right to a $25,000 operation for which they are ill-prepared."

That's exactly what bothers me about this surgery. Again, for some people it is a last resort in saving their lives. For others, it's a quick fix that's not really a fix at all.

Carnie Wilson, someone that brought the procedure into national spotlight years ago, was just featured in Vh1's Celebrity Fit Club. Why? Because, Carnie, like many people who get the surgery, aren't changing their lifestyles, so they are bound to gain that weight back.

I've seen people get the surgery, lose the weight, only to gain it back in just a few short years. They don't want to change their poor eating habits. They don't want to exercise. They instead, carry on like they didn't just spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to fix a problem they created themselves.

It's no shocker why less than five percent of people who get the operation maintain adequate weight loss over a five year period.

I used to be overweight when I was younger, but for all of the weight that I didn't lose simply from getting taller I had to work at losing. I gave up red meat. I stopped eating pork. And even now, I'm still trying to eat healthier and be more active.

I don't want to be cynical with diabetes.

It would be tragic, he said, to see the same phenomenon repeated among children.

Call it a hunch, but I see history repeating itself.

This article makes me want to take another stab at eating those nasty green vegetables that I've been avoiding in the freezer.

Labels: Jr., Star Jones