Kelly Brownell, chairman of Yale University's psychology department and director of its Center for Eating and Weight Disorders notes:

"Most regions look very similar to Atlanta – anything that's built after World War II is pretty much auto-oriented," he said. "We need to start to look at the way we're designing our communities."

"These results show that the environment, affecting our physical activity, is quite influential."

Dysfunctional suburban sprawl patterns are a huge part of the problem. Is there a park next to you? Is it worth going to? Can you walk to the store? Would you want to?

We are becoming voluntarily isolated in our own homes. Instead of being outside relating to the community we are indoors relating to a virtual electronic world of television, internet, and games.

Another new study finds that Texas children are among the nation's fattest. A huge part of the problem, in addition to sprawl, is advertising and its inseparable partner: corporate media.

We don't allow advertisers to sell out kids cigarettes and alcohol, why are we allowing them to see tens of thousands of commercials, all convincing them that they need to eat things that will eventually lead to a variety of diseases?

Advertising supported media is complicit in this arrangement. Major networks routinely refuse ads from consumer groups that are critical of the food advertised in their broadcasts.

"Suck it up, it's the real world.”
-ABC, vice president of advertising, Julie Hoover

So because it's the "real world" it's acceptable to take advantage of our children and make them sick for private profit?

"Personal responsibility" is an embarrassing argument in the face of the onslaught of - literally - brainwashing. Of course parents do need to severely restrict (or eliminate) television and have children not see any commercials until they are old enough to understand the propaganda.

But some people never understand it. They stare unblinking night after night into the glowing orb of commercial messaging with a voiceover screaming thoughts that, at some point, the person will think were their own. That's part of the reason why obese kids become diseased, obese adults.

A major part of the solution is strict regulation of advertising of food to children, if not outright banning.

Further, media literacy and critical thinking need to be taught in the schools. The school's responsibility should not be just to indoctrinate us in to behaving and operating cash registers. They need to teach us to think for ourselves and understand that most messages, images, and sounds they will hear the rest of their lives are commercial messages of one type or another whose sole purpose is to convince them of something, if only for a moment: Buy This.

The television is not kid friendly, especially child-oriented TV. The more "cute" or "cool" it is, the more worried you should be.

We are creating the first generation of children who will be less healthy than their parents.