Growing girth: Childhood obesity is becoming a serious problem in Utah

We drink soda instead of water or low-fat milk, and we face an onslaught of junk-food marketing to children and adolescents. Parents find it difficult to make time for healthy meals and family activities, and some believe their neighborhoods aren't safe enough to play outside.

Across the United States, 17 percent of children and adolescents are overweight. Utah's rates are a little lower than that, but the Beehive State is closing in on the national average every year.

"We are concerned that this generation is going to be less healthy than their parents," said Dr. Tamara Lewis of Intermountain Healthcare. "It's an enormous problem in Utah."

Henry Faamoana is a polite young man with bright eyes and a warm smile. He tries to stay upbeat but is bored to tears sometimes. Hopes for a better education brought the Faamoana family to Utah from American Samoa in April 2006. But Henry can't go to school because of his health.

He stays home, trying not to eat. He watches TV, drinks water, plays cards, reads scriptures or goes for a drive with his dad. Anything to take his mind off food.

Doctors and nutritionists encourage Henry to keep his calories to about 300 per meal. The boy says he's eating three small meals a day, with nothing between breakfast, lunch and dinner. He's constantly hungry.

The hunger pangs are good, Jackson tells his patient. With no food available, hunger pangs mean the body is looking for fat to burn.

"Sometimes he complains to me, 'Mom, I'm tired of eating vegetables all day,"' said Moana Faamoana.

"I really want to have a normal life," Henry tells a reporter. But he does not have a normal life.

His doctors describe him as "lethally overweight." He has congestive heart failure, type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, which means he stops breathing at night, and circulation problems in his legs.

Medical and social implications of obesity are profound and include depression, low self-esteem, hypertension, musculo-skeletal problems, sleep apnea, gall bladder disease, asthma, menstrual abnormalities in women, high cholesterol, a shorter lifespan and diabetes.

A few decades ago, diabetes was generally linked to middle-age adults gaining weight. Today, the major increase is among children.

Experts especially worry about this trend, because treatments for the disease — aside from insulin — have not been tested on young people.

Henry had always been big, but no one was very concerned until his mother heard him coughing one night. Her other son ran in and said Henry couldn't breathe and was vomiting. "Then he was laid out like he was dead," said Moana Faamoana.

The boy's heart was failing. He spent two months in intensive care.