By Jessi Tabalba

Blame who you want – McDonald's and other fast food chains who aim their marketing squarely at the prepubescent crowd; living room Playstations, where kids can shoot alien invaders without even walking to the arcade; similarly corpulent parents too lazy to venture into the produce section or sports equipment aisle of their local Wal-Mart – but the fact is kids are getting fatter. 

Statistics from the CDC (Center for Disease Control, America's watchdog organization for epidemics) show that from 1976 to 2003, the obesity rate among children aged 2-17, rose an average of 5% to 15%. Obesity is excess body fat, it's generally measured using Body Mass Index, a ratio calculated by taking a person's weight in kilos and dividing it by their height in m2. The National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases in the U.S defines obesity as having a BMI of over 30. (A healthy BMI is between 18-25.) 

Leave it to America, land of quick fixes to propose an eight-week solution to weight problems for busy parents and chubby kids. So-called "fat-camps" have been around for decades, but with childhood obesity quickly becoming an epidemic, fat camps have become serious business. Case in point: Googling "fat camp" doesn't yield satire on the first page - no South Park scripts or Ben Stiller movies - but a number of summer retreats that actually insist they aren't "fat camps."

In an era when political correctness reigns supreme, overweight and obese children are invited to "summer weight-loss camps," a vaguely euphemistic term that's, perhaps, a Post-Modern equivalent to a loving grandmother's assertion that it's all just "baby fat." The first weight-loss camp to open, Camp Shane, is well-known for being featured in the MTV documentary "Fat Camp." Its website glows "It's not easy to lose weight, but at Camp Shane we make it easy! We're so busy having a great time. We don't realize we're making changes in our lifestyles that will help us take and keep the weight off forever!" Indeed. Few statistics are available on the business side of weight loss camps, but considering that a New York Times article estimated the average cost of a camp at 7,500$ per summer, and that over 800 kids headed to Camp Shane in 2005 (and over 1,000 to the three New Image camps in Florida), it certainly qualifies as an industry. 

Grammar aside, the leaders of Camp Shane have a point. While the average weight-loss camper loses 2-6 pounds a week at a fat camp, it seems that obesity is a symptom of an addiction not only to food, video games or television, but to a sedentary lifestyle where tasty, comforting high-fat foods are always available. According to their websites, camps like Camp Shane and their adult equivalents ("weight-loss resorts" or less kindly, "fat farms") focus on CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), which seems a fancy way of saying eight-week rehab for a lifetime (however long or short) of overeating and getting little exercise, for whatever reason, psychological, social or physical.

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