By La Risa Lynch
Ernestine Pendleton, of Marquette Park, didn’t plan on working up a sweat when she picked up her five year-old son from a pee-wee basketball league at the South Side YMCA.

But a step aerobic class demonstration piqued her curiosity. Pendleton found the live demonstration more engaging then her Wii video game exercise program.

“There was more movement with the instructor giving us things to do as oppose to just going back and forth on the board,” said Pendleton, whose children, ages nine and five, joined her in the demonstration.

She said she and her children need to lose weight.

“I had weight problems all my life. I don’t want them to suffer from diabetes. I want them to be healthy and productive,” Pendleton said.

Her impromptu workout was part of a day long event held last Saturday at the YMCA, 6330 S. Stony Island, to address teen health and wellness issues. Healthy Kids Day featured activities for both children and adults.

It included a health and resource fair, exercise demonstrations, line dancing, health screenings for diabetes and prostrate cancer. Confidential HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) testing was also available.

The YMCA partnered with Metropolitan Area Group for Igniting Civilization (MAGIC), a Woodlawn-based youth group, to foster a healthy life style among teens.

“With the prevalence of obesity and preventable chronic disease in our community, no one can afford to be a passive participant in their health decision,” said Cherita Ellens, the South Side YMCA’s executive director. “It’s encouraging to see teens serving as role models for this message.”

To kick-off the event youth from several community groups held a press conference to bring attention to health issues facing teens including high childhood obesity.

First lady Michele Obama has championed the issue through her ‘Let’s Move’ initiative, which creates programs that get kids active and eat healthy to reduce childhood obesity.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 20 percent of the nation’s adolescents are overweight or obese. Obese adolescents are at an increased risk for heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes.

Getting youth to eat healthy often takes a back seat to programs that address teen pregnancy, drugs and peer pressure, said Chloe Rose Jackson, a youth leaders with MAGIC.

Americans, she noted spend $140 billion on fast food each year. But those foods are often high in fat, sodium and calories, Jackson said, noting that a McDonald’s cheeseburger happy meal with fries contains 640 calories and 24 grams of fat.

“This is over half the total calories that many children should be eating a day,” the 17-year-old Lindblom Math & Science Academy student said. “Something as simple as eating is killing teens around the nation.”

Youth think that “junk is healthy” because they haven’t been given the right information on how to eat or live healthy, contends Aniyah Orr, with Target Area Development Corp., a Auburn-Gresham community organization. She said that is in evident in school lunchrooms.

“In order for you to have a salad, you have to pay for it,” the 15-year-old Lindblom student said. “You can get pizza and nachos and all the unhealthy stuff free, which is kind of amazing for me. Health should be the first thing on our school’s agenda….”

A healthy lifestyle goes beyond eating right, but making informed decisions and being sexually responsible, the youth said. Citing statistics, they noted that 46 percent of 15 -19 year-olds have had sex at least once, and 35 percent of teens ages 15 -17 used a condom during sex.

The teens say those numbers are not surprising giving that HIV cases among youth are raising. According to the CDC, between 40,000 and 80,000 new HIV cases are reported each year in the U.S. and half of all new infections are among people younger than 25, they said.

While Sakinah Muhammad, 17, also a MAGIC youth leader, said it was “highly unrealistic” to believe teens are going to be abstinent, she noted they must be educated about safe sex practices, but realize there are consequences to their actions.

“You have to protect yourself,” Muhammad said. “It only takes one slip up to end up pregnant or with a STD.”

The event wrapped up with a teen forum where they candidly talked about sex, youth violence and snitching. Whether to snitch or not was a hard question for many to answer, including Deshaun Carpenter, 20.

“If you are living the street life, you have to understand there is a code you live by,” Carpenter said. “But it is kind of hard for individuals who ain’t living the street life, because they are involved even if they are not

involved, because it is their neighborhood too.”