“Roman children are getting fat.” Giuseppe Maggiore is the head of hepatogastroenterology and nutrition at the Bambino Gesù children’s hospital. And he launches this alarm entirely directed to parents: the numbers are growing, to such an extent that it has been necessary to open a bariatric surgery department for children. In practice, the same interventions that are carried out for the very obese in adulthood and which also lead to the reduction of the size of the stomach (to have less sense of hunger, for example), are declined for the little ones.
The Bambino Gesù performs these operations at its headquarters in Palidoro, after a series of treatments to put the children on a diet. However, when all this does not have the desired results, the path may be that of the operation, to then avoid that over the years they may have all that series of diseases where the extra pounds affect. “We’ve had at least a thirty percent increase in our obesity-related clinical activities,” explains the doctor. This means that in recent years more and more parents have become alarmed by those children who once would have defined themselves only and pleasantly as “chubby”. Also three out of ten children suffer from extra kilos: and, in Lazio, they are either overweight or obese. A phenomenon that brings the region closer to those of the South, where the rule that “fat is beautiful” still seems to apply. Grandma’s “you’re wasted” when she saw her normal-weight grandson and tried to trim a few more snacks (or a rather abundant plate of pasta), in fact has effects not only on aesthetics but also on health.
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THE ADVICES
The doctor invites you to check all weight gains exceeding 5 kilos and to measure the waist circumference as well as the body mass index (calculated with age, weight and height). Therefore, a seamstress meter should be associated with the scale. “Even in Lazio we have children and adolescents with pathological obesity: at the age of 12 you can weigh up to 100 kilos”, continues Maggiore. At the Campus Bio-Medico in Rome, a team of researchers led by the scholar Laura De Gara developed the Nutripiatto together with Nestlé. It is a tool that has earned a publication on Plos One, for the creation of which 115 Roman children of Trigoria and Laurentino between 4 and 5 years have been involved and which has turned into a guide that children can use to understand what is the correct portion of a dish. In fact, the results showed that the use of this system increased portion sizes and the frequency of vegetable consumption, decreased the consumption of various junk foods and increased water intake (for a child the recommended amount is of six glasses a day). «The situation is quite critical in Rome as well as in Southern Italy – says Yeganeh Manon Khazrai, professor of the Human Nutrition Sciences degree course at the Bio-medical Campus – With the Nutripiatto, the child as well as playing with it can understand how to eat and what. And it’s also a great tool for the family to explain the correct amount of carbohydrates and proteins. The children came out devastated by Covid: depressed and with feeding problems. And the economic crisis pushes families to make them go to the gym less».
THE ADULTS
Even among the older ones, in Rome and Lazio, there was a strong increase in weight. Paolo Sbraccia, director of the Center of Excellence for the fight against obesity at the Tor Vergata Polyclinic, raises the alarm: «Conditions worsened after Covid. We are waiting for September to have new drugs available that could contribute to the fight against obesity with effects similar to those of bariatric surgery”. Yes, because even for adults, weight reduction is not just aesthetic: in fact, excess kilos affect the health of 2 million people in Lazio only due to cardiovascular disease. Obesity is at least a risk factor for more than half of the cancers diagnosed in the Region, at least 22,000 cases out of 35,000. In Rome alone, among the 2.8 million inhabitants, there are over 1.1 million cases of diseases in which obesity is one of the factors capable of triggering or worsening them. And then there are tumors: of the 17,895 diagnosed in the capital in 2019 (the latest survey from the Region), over 7,000 are related to the digestive system and could be closely linked to diet and lifestyle more generally. «In Lazio we are a little worse off than the Italian average – continues Sbraccia – Yes, we are the best of the worst. A condition that obviously also has a strong impact on health care spending, because obesity has direct and indirect costs to consider».
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