I really enjoyed Louis Theroux’s recent two documentaries, Extreme Love, even if they were both heartbreaking.
The first, which looked at autism focused on a specialist school in New Jersey. What struck me first though was that I was somewhat thrown as to what I was watching. Was this a special school for autism, or a special school for fat kids?
It sounds like a joke, but I was genuinely shocked as to how many of the children at the school were significantly overweight. Has obesity in the United States become such an epidemic that it has now become so shocking to the rest of the world?
Probably not. A quick google around suggests that obesity is particularly prevelant in children with autism. They use data which is now eight years old and even back then, over 30% of children with autism were reported to be overweight.
This compares with 23% of children who do not suffer from autism – still a very high number though.
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Tags: autism, fat kids, louis theroux, weight
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.