Four million kids in the U.S. are severely obese and the numbers in Wood County are at least as staggering.
Dr. Dick Wittberg, executive director of the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department says there are about 13,000 school-age children in Wood County.
More than 3,000 of them range from borderline severely overweight to obese to morbidly obese.
“If you are obese as a child, you have a very high probability of becoming obese as an adult,” Wittberg says. “While children may be potentially more able to deal with the health effects of being obese and I’m only going to say maybe on that, certainly that will start catching up with you.”
Wittberg says the more active your children are, the more fit they are... the better they'll do in school academically, the better their behavior is and the better their attendance is.
Their overall health will improve, including obesity.