Fat teens make for fatty livers

Which then makes for early-life liver transplants. This is NO JOKE/

Is this child abuse? Criminal child abuse? Scroll down for my thought.

Per the story, many of today’s obese teens may need a new liver by their 30s or 40s. The American Liver Foundation estimates from 2-5 percent of American children over age 5, nearly all of them obese or overweight, have the condition called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease that lies behind this.

How bad is it? In St. Louis, Dr. Jose Derdoy, head of liver transplants at Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in St. Louis, said he’s treated a 15-year-old, 530-pound boy and many others with the condition.

Yes, genes have some influence on our weight, but …

DO NOT TELL ME a 15-year-old hits 530 pounds because of genes.

Not a slim American around

In 40 years, that is. At that time, all Americans could be overweight.

Some food for thought, if you will:

“We are terribly, ominously off-course,” says Dr. David Katz, co-founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center. “To close the gap, we need to fix everything that’s broken — from neighborhoods without sidewalks, to the high price of produce, to food marketing to children, to misleading health claims on food packages, to school days devoid of physical activity and school cafeterias devoid of healthful offerings. The list goes on and on.”

Others cite individual responsibility for diet and lifestyle habits. Dr. Neal Barnard says dietary modification could be a crucial step in solving the problem.

“U.S. eating habits are nowhere near where they should be,” he says. “The average American eats 50 pounds more meat and 20 pounds more cheese per year, compared to the 1960s. ... I would strongly encourage Americans to adopt more vegetarian meals.”

Now, assuming he has a whole-grains focus, I agree.

Beyond that, it’s intellectual laziness. Foods have been labeled with at least basic health information for what, 30 years or more?

And, intellectual laziness by parents is hurting their own innocent children.

If this prediction becomes true, it’s in part because obesity problems may start as young as 2 years old.

Obama: Bit of a hypocrite on Cokes in school?

He says we could help children’s health a lot by getting sodas out of schools.

True indeed. But, has he made efforts to seriously reform farm legislation so monocrop Big Ag corn doesn’t get so much subsidies, which then help make high-fructose corn syrup in those sodas so cheap? Has he fought against the tariff on Cuban sugar, which allows HFCS to undercut it and make Cokes so cheap?