Mark's Minutes - Diabetes A Childhood Epidemic

You know, children are our most precious resource and the most disturbing thing to me that I'm seeing is that our children are increasingly affected by this epidemic of diabetes. We're raising the first generation of Americans to live sicker and to die younger than their parents. Our life expectancy is actually declining for the first time in human history. Now here's some startling facts. One, let me just sink in for a minute. One in two children in America are overweight. Childhood obesity has tripled from 1980 to 2010. There are now more than 2 million morbidly obese children above the 99th percentile weight. These are kids who are getting diabetes at 10 years old. These are kids who are 400 pounds at 12 years old. In New York City, 40% of children are overweight or obese. One in three children born today will get diabetes in their life. Childhood obesity will have the same impact, actually more impact, on life expectancy of children than every single childhood cancer combined. What are we doing to our Kids, let's think about that for a minute and let's do something to stop that.