Fighting the trend: OSU professor brings awareness to obesity issue

Jul. 26—Oklahoma ranks No. 18 in the nation for childhood obesity.

One out of five, or 20%, of children from ages 10-17 in Oklahoma struggle with obesity.

It's facts like these that push Deana Hildebrand in her passion to support youth and families with healthy eating habits and more active lifestyles.

"What's alarming is, that's not including those who are overweight," said Hildebrand, a registered dietician and a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Oklahoma State University. "The reason it's important that we pay attention to it is the health consequences. It's not about body shape, but it's about potential health ... blood pressure and high cholesterol, which lead to cardiovascular disease ... Type 2 diabetes and kid's asthma."

Poor health leads to missing school, poor academic performance leads to possibly compromising the ability to earn a living — which leads to a low-income range that exacerbates the issue further.

Obesity-related healthcare costs in the United States in 2019 reached $173 billion, Hildebrand pointed out.

Hildebrand, along with her colleagues, developed Farm to You, an interactive nutrition education program used by school districts across Oklahoma since 2008. She's also helped lead workshops such as Cooking for Kids, a school nutrition program that helps professionals plan and prepare healthier meals.

Obesity rates tend to be higher in rural communities on a national average, Hildebrand said. And they tend to be 22% higher among Hispanic and Black children.

In Stillwater, most youth would be classified as living in higher income households.

"But if we go out to rural Oklahoma, where the national data says the obesity prevalence is going to be higher, I think there's a lot of contributing causes," Hildebrand said.

Some of it is genetics, and a person's genetics can't be changed, she said.

"It's important for us as health care professionals to recognize that for some people, weight is just going to be higher than for other people," Hildebrand said. "We need to learn to accept that and not expect everyone to fit into this same ideal body shape."

Yet environmental issues, especially in rural American and in rural Oklahoma, play a big role. Families may not have access to healthy foods and the opportunity for physical activity may be more limited, such as a park without a playground or safe, well-groomed trails.

Rural schools can't always offer activities for students with interests other than regularly scheduled athletic programs. In addition, rural communities may not have a full-service grocery store. Instead, the most affordable food tends to be highly processed.

"Those foods tend to have more of the food components or nutrients that we need to eat less of — sugar, fat and salt," Hildebrand said.

She remembers driving through parts of rural Oklahoma where she didn't see any fast-food restaurants, and the only place to grab a meal was at the local gas station — which wasn't much better.

For some families, just getting a meal on the table can be difficult between school activities and homework.

"At the end of the day, going to that convenience store or driving through a fast-food restaurant ... takes a little bit of the chaos out of daily life," Hildebrand said.

Hildebrand said big issues such as the food that's available to people, food systems, making healthy food affordable and food assistance programs reaching the right people are all areas that need to be addressed.

"The work that needs to be done in Oklahoma and nationwide is, how do we address those things?" she said.

Even further, how can food assistance programs offer people less limited choices, she questioned.

"Is that ethical to say, 'Well, you're low-income, so you can only buy these kinds of foods?'" Hildebrand said. "Shouldn't they be able to make their own food decisions?"

Even in school programs, it's difficult to find more employees to cook more things made from scratch for low pay. Changes in federal policy have led to serving highly processed foods in schools, although new regulations have been put in place to reduce the amount of saturated fats and calories in meals.

"We've come a ways, (but) there's more work to be done," Hildebrand said.

She noted that with programs like WIC, a special supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, national data reflects a slightly lower childhood obesity rate for those who use the program.

Fighting obesity doesn't have to be overwhelming. Planning meals at home and not eating out is a good start. Changing ingredients in a meal can also help.

"For the older youth ... share the responsibility for preparing meals," Hildebrand said. "That's not only important for helping you eat healthier, but it's also helping those youth develop food preparation planning skills ... (for) when they go to college."

For borderline low-income families, Hildebrand suggests taking advantage of programs like WIC, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and free and reduced school meals. These programs will help in times of immediate need and food insecurity.

To encourage more active lifestyles, Hildebrand said it's a good idea to walk or bike to school if possible — using the Safe Routes to School federal program.

"If there's not a safe route to school, bring your community together, talk to decision makers, city councilmen," Hildebrand said.

The OSU Department of Nutritional Sciences received $780,000 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the first year in a five-year High Obesity Program (HOP) that will address nutrition and health challenges in eastern Oklahoma.

Hildebrand and her OSU colleagues, Jill Joyce and Lacey Wallace, have seen success with the program in Adair and Muskogee counties, and the program will be implemented in seven more counties in September.

"We've got to do more than just tell people what they need to do," Hildebrand said. "We need to build communities so that they can do those things."