weight loss (Photo : Facebook)
The Baltimore City Council has accepted a bill that would ban sugary drinks from kids' menus in the city as part of an effort to fight childhood obesity.
Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen hopes the bill will help parents make healthier choices and help children lose weight.
"In my practice, I've seen eight-year-olds weigh over 150 pounds. I've seen 15-year-olds who have adult onset diabetes," she said.
She emphasized that sugary drinks are to blame for the city's staggering childhood obesity rates. One out of every three children in Baltimore is obese or overweight. One out of every four drinks at least one soda a day.
Baltimore isn't alone as a victim of the childhood obesity epidemic still sweeping the U.S.
Numerous studies have linked sugary drinks to childhood obesity. Childhood obesity rates have tripled over the past three decades in the U.S., with some 17 percent of children and teens ages 2 to 19 now considered clinically obese.
A study published in the clinical journal Pediatrics in 2013 found the more sugary drinks a child drank, the higher his or her body mass index by the ages of 4 and 5 years old. Five-year-olds that drank sugary drinks everyday were about 1.5 times more likely to be obese than those who didn't.
Researchers from Harvard discovered that for each additional 12-ounce soda children drank each day, the chances of becoming obese jumped by 60 percent.
Much of this damage was done over the past 30 years. During this time, the average weight of an American child rose by more than 11 pounds, according to The Washington Post.
The statistics equally alarming across the nation and has ignited criticism of fast food chains.
