Shaquille O’Neal, the colorful center for the Miami Heat, has taken on the child obesity crisis with his own reality TV show “Shaq’s Big Family Challenge.” Reminiscent of “the Biggest Loser” for kids, Shaq guides 9 Florida kids on a 9 month program to lose weight through exercise and diet.

To help the kids accomplish their weight loss goals, Shaq has assembled his own “dream team”including: his own physician and trainer, Dr. Carlon “Doc” Colker, M.D.; personal trainer Tarik Tyler; nutritionist Joy Bauer; childhood obesity expert Dr. William Muinos, M.D. from Miami Children’s Hospital; Food Network celebrity chef Tyler Florence; and his college coach from Louisiana State University, Dale Brown. Shaq aptly points out that fewer schools are requiring mandatory PE. Combined with the poor dietary choices available at school and it’s little wonder that one third of children and teens in the US are classified as overweight or obese.

I remember standing in lunch line back in high school, waiting to be served grey colored peas and burger patties floating in water with globules of fat. Hey it was food and I was hungry so I ate it. Attending NYC public schools, you quickly became aware that lunch was about convenience and not nutrition. It doesn’t look like things have changed much. Check out the daily lunch fare at Cohoes high school in New York below, for example. I am sure this is fairly typical of most schools.

PIZZA
HAMBURGER/BUN w/TRIMMINGS
CHEF SALAD/ROLL
CHICKEN
CHOICE OF SANDWICH
NACHO SUPREME

But I digress.  Weighing in at a reported 325 lbs and standing 7 foot 1 inches, it’s somewhat ironic that Shaq has got his own weight loss show considering that he himself is classified as “obese.” It looks like Shaq could also use the help of his own Dream Team…

Teens attempting to lose weight are more likely to skip breakfast and binge eat, which may explain why these teens are also more likely to gain weight according to a new study from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Most teens choose short-term dieting strategies, such as fasting, smoking, and skipping meals over more effective long-term strategies, such as greater veggie and fruit consumption along with more exercise.

The study interviewed 2,516 teens in 1999 at which time 56% of girls and 35% of boys reporting that they had dieted at least once. Follow up five years later revealed that female dieters were more likely to skip breakfast and binge eat, as well as gain 0.69 more body mass index (BMI) than those who did not diet. Male dieters were more likely to binge eat, to be less physically active and subsequently found to have gained 0.77 more BMI than boys who reported that they did not diet.

Our appetite for short term fixes, celebrity crash diets, diet pills, miracle cures and the like is obviously fueling these poor eating habits. Add to this the high-calorie junk food that is served in most school cafeterias and most students are doomed to gain weight. I remember growing up on public school lunch in NYC, when ketchup was considered part of the “vegetable food group” that went along with the “mystery meat” burger. I believe that poor eating habits developed at a young age are very difficult to correct. Unless and until healthy eating and lifestyle habits are developed in the home and at school, this obesity epidemic will never be effectively addressed.