Mainers, according to researchers, are getting fatter. Close to 150 people in health care, business and public policy convened in Auburn today to weigh in on childhood obesity and its lasting effects. The Hanley Center for Health Leadership, which sponsored the forum, released new data.

"And the statistics right now are pretty grim," says Jim Harnar, the center's executive director. He says researchers looked at 17 Maine companies - including Barber Foods and Cianbro -- and projected what will happen when today's overweight youth join their workforces.

According to the estimates, business costs related to lost time, low productivity and health problems -- such as diabetes and heart disease -- are projected to nearly double in eight years. "In eight years from now, the employers that we looked at, fully 80 percent of their workforce -- eight out of ten people in those companies -- are going to be either overweight or obese," Harner says.

Harnar says there are more signs that unhealthy kids will put Maine at an economic disadvantage in the future. A survey of 41 teachers and principals revealed that nearly three-quarters say students who are physically active and fit perform better than kids who are not.

"We're looking to the future, and our competitiveness in this growing international marketplace, the future of our economy, not to mention the future health of our kids in the next generation," Harner says.

It's no surprise that tates like Maine are facing these challenges, says Dr. Joe Thompson. As director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, Thompson has studied societal changes that are contributing to children growing fatter.

He reminded his forum-goers about how they used to play outdoors and save cartoon-watching for Saturday mornings. "Today, your kids and grandkids have seven different stations coming in through cable, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, of which more than 50 percent of the advertising on those channels are food advertisements," Thompson says.

Thompson says the Federal Trade Commission is releasing a report in July about restricting this kind of marketing to kids. But television, he says, contributes to the obesity problem in a less direct way. "All of the news shows that show us as parents the worst thing that has happened anywhere in the world on a thirty-minute repeating cycle, so that even if we live in a very safe neighborhood, we're not willing to let our kids go out and play."

In Maine, businesses have banded together to fight obesity through media campaigns, such as Let's Go. The state, meanwhile, uses nearly half of its tobacco settlment money on anti-obesity programs targeting young people.

The state has a lot at stake, according to advocates, given that it pays for the health care of about a quarter million low-income and elderly Mainers. A study of two to five year olds in the MaineCare program revealed the challenges ahead.

"Forty-eight percent -- almost 50 percent -- are overweight or obese," says David Crawford, program manager at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He says health educators with the state are trying to change eating habits at child care centers and Head Start programs.

"One of the issues is they start their eating habits in this age group," Crawford says. "The taste of potato chips -- the high sugar, high fat, high salt, if you think terms of tobacco being addictive, the food companies look at high fat, high sugar, high salt craveability indexes."

The Hanley Center is trying to work with environmental and outdoor recreation groups to combat the problem. Katie Tremblay directs the residential camping program for kids at the Chewonki Foundation, and is seeing first hand the issue of child obesity. "One of the things is making sure that we have equipment that will fit all the students, particularly on our ropes course, harnesses that will fit all different kinds of students."

Tremblay says as a group devoted to protecting the environment, the Chewonki Foundation has a special interest in getting children to be physical outdoors. "The more time they spend outdoors, the more they care about the environment."

And getting children to care about the environment, Tremblay says, ensures there will be a future generation of environmental stewards.