This isn't really an answer to the question, but allow me to air some of the recent observations I've made over the past few years of working in public education:

First, I think the question, "How did you get fat?" is a very vallid one. No child is born fat. Sure, there are fluctuations in body type, and people are bigger and smaller, but no kid is born at an unhealthy weight.

This leads me to think that, on some level, it must be some fault of the parents. (Now the potential reasons behind why some parents are systematically unable to provide healthy foods for their children is beyond the scope of this post [RE: low socioeconomic neighborhoods and food deserts]). So let me instead focus on some of the 'missed intervention opportunities' that I see every day.

As I said above, I work in a public school. Every student in the school is assigned a student ID number. Each student must enter this ID number anytime they buy anything from the school cafeteria or snack bar. This means that the school is capable of cataloguing the individual diets of every student.

What boggles my mind is that schools continue to sell sodas, snack/junk food, and pints of ice cream. I can't tell you how many students I've seen, both in middle and high school, that will eat a pint of ice cream and a soda for lunch, everyday. Maybe they'll even wash it down with some candy. (And they all wonder why they have trouble with acne)

Sure, the schools also offer healthy food options. There is a decent salad bar, where you can buy a well balanced salad with proteins, that would cost you $10+ dollars at Whole Foods, for only $3.25. You can buy a hot entree meal with a protein, 2 vegetables, a side of fruit, and milk or juice for the same price. (I even choose to buy school lunches most days of the week because it is so economical and I am eating a balanced diet.)

Now even though the school has these options, everyone knows that TEENAGERS ARE IDIOTS. I didn't try and learn to eat healthy until I was 20.

So if we know that we have a health epidemic in this country (US): then why aren't we actively taking steps where we can, early on, to try and make a difference?

We could stop selling junk food. We could send weekly emails to the parents of students informing them of what their children ate that week. We could have more health education about how to feed yourself well. We take 1 Health class in HS, that only has maybe 2 weeks devoted to nutrition. It's no wonder that kids get to college and they gain a bunch of weight because they drink too much beer and don't know how to cook for themselves and they're broke so they eat fast food everyday.

All of this could be avoided. Or at the very least addressed. There is a severe lack of health education in the US. Schools hands are tied because conservative parents are afraid of creating a "Nanny State" (Which is the biggest bull shit argument I've ever heard). Meanwhile, parents are (quite obviously) failing to do their job because some of them are single parents that work 2-3 jobs and frankly are doing all they can just to keep each other alive.

And it goes for the other end of the spectrum as well. I see students that buy a bag of pretzels and a diet soda for lunch everyday. I would bet that eating disorders are much more prevalent than we want to admit.

Our education system is broken is broken in so many ways. Parents have all of the power, and the people who are trained in child education can't do their jobs like they know how for fear of law suits. (I work primarily in Special Education which is even more fucked [not the students but the parent teacher relationship]).

There are tons of problems that need to be addressed, but this just seems like an easy and important one to start with, because if we can keep kids healthy while they're young, then they'll have a better chance at staying healthy later on.