A study of obese teens has found that the number of weight loss surgeries has dramatically increased in recent years. Researchers at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey collected information from hospitals across the United States to determine how many adolescents were going under the knife in order to lose weight.

Researchers calculated the number of surgeries that took place between 1996 and 2003 and estimated that approximately 2,750 bariatric procedures took place across the country. While numbers remained fairly steady throughout the 1990s, the number of surgeries performed on teens tripled from 2000 to 2003. The results were published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The number of teens undergoing procedures like gastric bypass surgery is still relatively small - less than one percent of weight loss surgeries performed - the fact that the number of surgeries have tripled in the past few years speaks to the growing problem of youth obesity. Obesity is becoming an epidemic in the U.S. and worldwide and it is impacting children at a greater rate than any other age group.

Adolescents are exposed to fast food advertising on a regular basis. They are bombarded by junk food wherever they turn - in vending machines, school cafeterias, fast food outlets and shopping centers. Some progress is being made to help curb childhood obesity, like removing soda from many school vending machines, but there is so much more that needs to be done. Teens need to be better educated about the dangers of junk food and taught how to make healthy food choices. Schools need to do away with vending machines and provide more nutritional foods in cafeterias. Parents need to remove sweets and refined carbohydrates from the home. There is a popular saying that children are our future. But if we continue to lead our children down this dangerous path we may end up outliving them.