Star special report: Poverty, obesity entwined

In Arizona 31 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 17 are overweight or obese, experts say. Lifestyle, diet and genetics play a role, but the biggest common denominator among them is socioeconomic.

"It's an amazingly paradoxical problem," says Dr. Tracey Kurtzman, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine. "If you think about poor people in the rest of the world, they are emaciated and skinny and impoverished and malnourished. Here, our poor population is malnourished with too much."

Part 1
Abundant fat, starch, sugar force adult ailments on kids

Part 2
School's 'Wicked Witch' sweeps out the 'no' foods