Season 0, Episode 1

Childhood Obesity: Danger Zone

Obesity—it's the fastest growing cause of disease and death in our country, and it's attacking more than 12 million of our children. The Food Network goes to the front lines of the childhood obesity epidemic to find out what's fueling the explosion in overweight children and teenagers and what parents, teachers, doctors and public officials are doing to fight a problem the U.S. Surgeon General calls "more serious" than terrorism. While weight is the last thing most overweight teenagers want to talk about, we profile a 500–pound 18-year-old who's become a radio celebrity speaking candidly about his own struggle with obesity and his last-ditch effort to finally get his weight under control. We travel to Arkansas where governor Mike Huckabee has turned a personal weight battle into a public policy initiative designed to target at-risk children. We also meet an inspirational 14-year-old whose dramatic diet and lifestyle changes reversed his obesity-related disease. We learn how one Connecticut doctor is fighting back against unhealthy food by teaching kids how to become "supermarket spies" and "nutrition detectives." Finally, we visit a New Jersey school that transformed a budget cut into a student exercise opportunity, and a professional chef who's turning school lunch in Cambridge, Mass., into a healthy dining experience.

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