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Is it abuse to force a child to run until unconscious? It is abuse to make a child listen to loud noise until deafness happens? Is it abuse to beat a child until the injuries are crippling? Is it abuse to lock a child in a cell and withhold food?

Of course, all of those deliberate cruelties are abuse, or worse. So is giving a child too much food. We're fortunate in America to have enough resources so that no child need go undernourished. However, the ready supply of all kinds of unnecessary foods, along with their enticing advertising, added to sedentary lifestyles in front of computers and TV sets, have made overfeeding our young a national disaster.

Even parents who try to serve nutritious meals must compete with what their children are bombarded with every day when they're not at home. There are enticing fast-food eateries on virtually every corner in the land. Now many of them offer video games and playgrounds to entice families to eat their meals there and teenagers to hang out. Additionally, studiously researched and sugar-coated propaganda by the greedy giant fast food chains and others is continuously pumped into the heads of children through television and other media.

Even in some of our schools, where education should fight obesity, there are now McDonalds's and Burger King branches replacing the school cafeteria. That isn't the only place where the invasion is taking place. I visited a very prestigious city art museum recently, and instead of enjoying the exhibits, most of the kids there were eating and gabbing in the fast-food restaurant on the property.

I went to see a close relative in a hospital several weeks ago. She's a young mother, age 35, with four children. She had been under medical care for years, primarily because gross obesity and other poor lifestyle habits had brought on diabetes and other serious ailments. As the kids and other family members waited in the hallways, she was in surgery in an attempt to save her foot from amputation. I looked at the members of her family around me. All were considerably overweight, and I shuddered to think of what clouded health futures were ahead for them.

If all responsible American parents could be convinced that overfeeding is deliberate cruelty, and could do whatever possible to prevent future health problems for their kids, maybe the problem would be less severe. However, they'll also need to realize that fighting the heavy pressures put on them and their kids by fast-food chains and others in fat- and sugar-loaded industries is a never-ending battle.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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