Thread: Fighting Childhood Obesity

Girl's odyssey shows challenge of fighting obesity
By Lindsey Tanner, Ap Medical Writer
Mon Feb 1, 4:40 am ET

CHICAGO – Paris Woods is hardly a poster child for the obesity epidemic. Lining up dripping wet with kids on her swim team, she's a blend of girlish chunkiness and womanly curves.

In street clothes — roomy pink sweats or skimpy tank tops revealing broad, brown swimmers' shoulders — the teen blends in with her friends, a fresh-faced, robust-looking All-American girl.

That's the problem.

Like nearly one-third of American teens, Paris Woods is overweight. Her doctor worries her weight will creep up into the obesity range. One out of four black girls her age is obese. The more than 11 million U.S. teens who are overweight or obese face an increased risk for diseases once confined to adults, like diabetes, artery damage and liver trouble. Those problems along with high blood pressure and high cholesterol are showing up increasingly in kids.

Paris' pediatrician urged her to take part in an intensive experiment. The goal? To see if a yearlong program of weekly sessions with a nutritionist, exercise trainer and doctor, all preaching major lifestyle changes, could keep the 14-year-old from becoming obese.

It's the kind of intensive help that the influential U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said last month can work for teens.

Through successes, setbacks and even a bout with swine flu, Paris tried sticking with it. Skipped sessions stretched the program from 12 months into 20, but she didn't quit.

Did it work? Stay tuned — her experience is a reflection of many families' struggles with obesity.

During Paris' endeavor:

_ Burger King introduced a 1,360-calorie triple Whopper sandwich; McDonald's profit climbed to $4.55 billion; and KFC introduced its Kentucky Grilled Chicken "for health-conscious customers."

_ Torrid, a nationwide chain of clothes for plus-size teen girls, opened its 156th store, up from six in 2001.

_ First lady Michelle Obama — who grew up a few miles from Paris Woods' Chicago home — made fighting childhood obesity her pet project. "We have a chance to change the fate of the next generation if we get on it," she said recently.


The options in Paris' middle-class mostly black South Side neighborhood are limited to a bounty of fast food. Paris has a taste for fried chicken, bacon cheeseburgers and Snickers bars, and sometimes little willpower. Swimming helps her fight that. The sport has been a passion since she was a little girl.

Her parents, Dinah and Parris Woods, wanted their three daughters to be active, to keep them busy and out of trouble. "You can't just do nothing," says Dinah, 47, a former fitness instructor.

In Paris' tween years, her weight started to creep up. She developed early and classmates made fun of her blossoming bust and swimmers' shoulders. "They started calling me fat," Paris says softly. It made her very self-conscious.

So she wears two suits to swim. They are a drag on her swimming times, but help camouflage her curves. Pulling on a blue swim cap and stretching goggles tight over her dark eyes, Paris shallow-dives into the pool where her club team practices.

With smooth, strong strokes, she glides effortlessly through the water, where no one comments on her size or tells her to watch what she eats. In the water, she says, "I stay calm. It takes all the stress away."

Paris' two college-age sisters ballooned into obesity in their teens. The family's pediatrician, Dr. Cathy Joyce, says that often happens — teens put on weight, go off to college, and come back obese.

So she asked Paris to join an obesity prevention study at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. Because shedding weight is tough if the people in charge of filling the fridge aren't on board, parents must enroll, too. Paris' parents are also overweight and with borderline high blood pressure. They readily signed up.

That's unusual. Joyce has had a hard time recruiting. Her goal is 50 patients; she has only 31. Some parents aren't willing to change the family's lifestyle, others don't think their overweight kids are fat.

Joyce says parents often don't notice until teens are very obese — weighing 50 pounds or so too much. "Reality shows like 'The Biggest Loser' definitely have not helped," she said. They've skewed the public's perception of what overweight looks like, featuring people who are dangerously obese. The show's 2010 cast — including a 526-pound Chicago-area DJ — is its heaviest ever.

At 5 feet 4 inches and 158 pounds, Paris started the program about 20 pounds overweight. That was April 2008, just before her 15th birthday.

One of Paris' sisters had become a vegetarian, so the family decided to do the same. The hospital program doesn't require a specific diet, but recommends healthy grains, lots of fruits and vegetables, and avoiding unhealthy fats. Patients also are taught to read food labels and to eat three meals a day.

The idea is to choose a lifelong healthy way of eating.

It was all new to the Woodses, a tight-knit, busy family who used to skip breakfast and snack on the run. Paris' mom likes to cook and the new regime lets her experiment with tofu, nuts and soy cheese. It also means shunning old family favorites, including ham and macaroni and cheese.

Their diet sometimes requires a trip to Whole Foods eight miles from home, and it's costlier, but Dinah Woods says she'd prefer paying now, rather than later with her health.

The change was drastic, but also seemed exciting. Paris loved the avocado sandwiches and veggie burgers her mom packed for lunch, even if some friends turned up their noses.

At their weekly group sessions at Dr. Joyce's office, the Woods family weighs in and gets eating tips and encouragement from a nutritionist. In the waiting room, there are half-hour workout sessions. Trainer Scott Mathews leads kids and parents through lunges, sit-ups, leg lifts and other exercises they're urged to do at home.

The Woodses usually come on Wednesday evenings. It's not a perfect time — everyone's bushed after school and work. Dinah is a sales counselor and Parris, 46, a technician for hospital TV systems, attends night school. But they all gamely roll out exercise mats and dive in.

A fall 2008 session has Paris on her back, pedaling her legs and breathing hard. She rolls her eyes when Mathews asks if she's getting tired. "I know you're tired. You just have to push when you're tired," he says.

Besides swimming most days, Paris likes to run with her two dogs, and tries to walk, instead of ride, when she can. Her parents walk a few miles several mornings before work. It's pretty easy to stick to the regimen during that first summer and fall.

By October, Paris' weight is down 8 pounds, to 150 and she's lost 3 inches from her waist. Her parents also have shed pounds, and all three say they have more energy. Paris has lost her taste for meat. "I'm just like, ew, it's so nasty," she says

Thanksgiving is the first big test. No turkey, ham, biscuits, cheesecake or chocolate cake like Dinah used to make. Instead, Paris says, it's "tofu everything," plus lots of vegetables and wheat rolls. Could Dinah's lemon cake made with egg substitute possibly taste as good as her traditional desserts? "No, not really," Paris says laughing, "but I had to eat something."

The Woodses are nervous before the next weigh-in, but the scale shows good news: No one gained weight.

By mid-December, Paris felt really proud. She bought new pants and belts. And looking in the mirror, she says, "I don't see a face around fat. I just see, like, my bone structure ... my features in my face" are more visible.

It's a face full of youthful softness and a grown-up beauty in her sparkling eyes and arched eyebrows. Paris is starting to tell herself she looks pretty.

Still hovering around 150 pounds, she hopes to weigh 140 by her 16th birthday, April 13. "If I reach that, I'll be pretty happy," she says. Her birthday would mark the end of the yearlong effort.

Chicago's 2008-09 winter is harsh, snowy and cold. Paris feels little motivation to venture outside to exercise. It's dark when she gets home from school and homework keeps her busy until bedtime.

Her friends alternate between encouragement and saying she's wasting her time. Her dad says Paris "is fine as long as she's at home. She pretty much sticks to the diet. When she's with friends, they go out to burger places. She struggles with that a bit."

At school lunch, friends reach over and grab bites of her veggie sandwiches, and Paris thinks it's unfair that their food is off-limits. Sometimes she takes a few bites, anyway.

By April 2009, it's clear Paris will miss her birthday goal. In fact, she's put on about 5 pounds. Wearing a tight magenta tank top accentuating her tummy bulge, she says, "I just want my stomach a little flatter."

But she acknowledges "getting a little tired" of the food.

Since they began a year ago, the family has missed several sessions because of busy schedules, but they've vowed to complete the program and are allowed to continue for several more months.

Then Paris is sidelined with swine flu. She skips a few more program sessions, and then a few more because of training for a lifeguard job, but also loses a few pounds.

During the summer, lifeguarding interferes. Instead of swimming, it means long hours sitting in a perch, watching other children swim. By the time she gets home, she's too pooped to work out.

The fast food at the pool proves tempting. She pushes the diet out of her mind, and pigs out with her friends at the pool on tacos, burgers and gyros.

There's no place to refrigerate the lunches her mom packs — sometimes boring leftover tofu burgers from the previous night's dinner.

She skips several doctor sessions, because of schedule conflicts and because she knows she's gaining weight. She's never been so disappointed in herself, and considers quitting for good.

Looking back, she says, "It was horrible. I was like, I couldn't go back because I gained so much weight."

But she returns to the medical center when the summer job is over.

Fall 2009 is stressful for everyone. Dinah has to work long hours, arriving home too late to fix dinner. She and her husband still eat vegetarian. Paris does too, at home, but continues to eat fast-food away from home. Now a high school junior, she's stressing out over college admissions exams and much of her free time is spent studying for them.

When Thanksgiving arrives, it's another tofu turkey day. But everyone falls off the wagon during a family vacation to Disney World after Christmas. Along with fresh seafood, there were funnel cakes, ice cream bars and cookies.

Finally, the Woodses' last program session arrives — Jan. 19, close to two years. Paris seems tense. You can almost hear a drum-roll as she steps onto the scale — 170.6 pounds.

That's 12 pounds heavier than when she started. Her waist size is the same, 33 inches.

There are no tears, but she looks dejected and is thinking "failure."

Dr. Joyce doesn't see it that way. Disappointing, yes. But she has overweight patients who weren't in the study who gained at least twice as much over the same time frame.

The success is that Paris didn't become obese — and she looks far from it — even though she's a mere four pounds away from that.

Paris' dad ended up a few pounds heavier too, but his waist shrank an inch. Her mom dropped 6 pounds and 5 waist inches.

Joyce says skipped sessions might have been a factor; continuous professional feedback is motivating although too costly to last indefinitely. A research grant paid for the Woodses to participate; otherwise the counseling and checkup sessions likely would have cost well over $4,000.

Paris Woods' results show what everyone knew at the start: Losing weight and keeping it off is tough, and life sometimes gets in the way.

Dr. Ned Calonge, chair of the preventive services task force, which recently reported that comprehensive programs for kids can work, said conquering the obesity epidemic also requires changing cultural norms: making healthy food more available than fast food and encouraging physical activity.

Joyce says it's too early to declare her program a failure or a success; some teens haven't finished the program and she'd like to track them afterward.

She says kids must realize it requires a lifestyle change, and that "it's not the McDonald's, it's not the Burger King that's pulling you in. You're choosing to go there."

Dinah Woods says her family learned that lesson, and more. For her, it was the first time in a long time that she went an entire year without gaining weight. Raised to think meat was required at every meal, Dinah says she learned "that it's OK to eat just vegetables for dinner," or even a peanut butter sandwich. "The beauty of it all, that all of us learned from it, is the importance of our health, that we're in control," she said.

As for Paris? Despite her disappointment, she says the program changed her for the better.

She knows she has to control her eating and keep active; she's even thinking about training for a triathlon. "I know what I'm supposed to do," she says. And she knows that if she works hard at it, everyday, she can succeed. "I believe I really can."

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100201/...xzb2R5c3NleQ--

January 29, 2010
The Obama children and child obesity

President Barack Obama is in Baltimore today, but it's his wife's last pronouncement on her campaign against childhood obesity that's caught my attention. As the president did several months ago in an education speech, First Lady Michelle Obama has taken a personal tack -- divulging some private information about her children -- to drive home her point about early intervention in kids' health.

In remarks at a YMCA in Virginia, Obama said her daughters' pediatrician warned her -- some time ago, apparently -- that the girls were getting "off track" in terms of body-mass index, according to this story. After the family made some simple changes -- making sure Sasha and Malia got enough exercise, offering vegetables and fruit at meals, limiting TV -- the change in the children's health was dramatic, she said.

In many ways, the First Lady is pointing a finger at herself with this story. She's saying she didn't notice that her children needed to eat better because she saw them as "perfect," as many parents do.

Any busy mom can relate. When we're told our children aren't measuring up to some standard, our first instinct is to feel enormously guilty. The personal aspect brings the story home and helps us remember how important the message is.

On the other hand, I do wonder about the kids' privacy factor here, and how disclosures like these could open the door to unwanted scrutiny for the first daughters. (In a poll here http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/feat...ence_test.html about the education speech, the majority of you felt grade information, for example, should be shared only with the child's permission or not at all, period.)

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/feat...e_obesity.html

Hey, whatever happened to leaving the Obama girls alone?

FLOTUS should be more careful about making an issue of her children. It is about being consistent. When she opens the door, or leaves it slightly ajar, the press and others will walk in.

Who's meeting with Cabinet members now?
The First lady
1 hr 29 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Who's that meeting with members of the Cabinet and Congress?

It's Michelle Obama, revving up for her campaign against childhood obesity.

The first lady met Tuesday at the White House with six legislators and three Cabinet members who have a big role in health policy. Mrs. Obama says she wants to get families, schools, businesses and governments working together on a problem that she says is "imminently solvable."

Mrs. Obama isn't the first first lady to get involved in policy. Rosalynn Carter sat in on Jimmy Carter's Cabinet meetings. And when Hillary Rodham Clinton was first lady, she was the architect of Bill Clinton's failed attempt to enact a major health reform package in the 1990s.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Who's that meeting with members of the Cabinet and Congress? It's Michelle Obama, revving up for her campaign against childhood obesity.

The first lady met Tuesday at the White House with six legislators and three Cabinet members who have a big role in health policy. Mrs. Obama says she wants to get families, schools, businesses and governments working together on a problem that she says is "imminently solvable."

Mrs. Obama isn't the first first lady to get involved in policy. Rosalynn Carter sat in on Jimmy Carter's Cabinet meetings. And when Hillary Rodham Clinton was first lady, she was the architect of Bill Clinton's failed attempt to enact a major health reform package in the 1990s.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100202/...hvc21lZXRpbmd3

Is it okay to talk about your daughters’ weight if it’s for the national good?
by Mira Jacob, Shine staff, 10 hours 1 minute ago
796 Comments

Two weeks after announcing the unnerving news that childhood obesity has tripled over the last 30 years, and unveiling her own initiative to combat it, Michelle Obama has offended critics by discussing her own “wake-up” moment—when the family pediatrician told her that daughters Sasha and Malia were becoming overweight.

“In my eyes I thought my children were perfect,” Mrs. Obama said at the January launch of her initiative. “I didn’t see the changes.”

While innocuous to some, this comment has set off both valid and not-so-valid criticism in the blogosphere—everything from calling the first lady well-intentioned-but-misguided to hinting that she could be tipping off her daughters’ future eating disorders. Even with one-third of American children classified as overweight or obese, several critics are far more concerned with Michelle Obama’s anecdotal use of her daughters.

Jeanne Sager, a writer for Strollerderby who admits to reading “everything through eating-disorder glasses” says she feels worried for the girls because their mother has “taken an extremely touchy subject out into the open.”

She goes on to say, “On the brink of teenagehood, Malia Obama is at an especially precarious position. With a naturally changing body, the idea that she has to face the world debating her fat puts her at higher risk for an eating disorder.”

In a post that delineates the difference between what is accepted in “the eating disorder world” vs. "the outside world," Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh of the Huffington Post writes, “I am sucker-punched to read that our First Family put their daughters on a 'diet' because they feared 'obesity' and no doubt will be lauded for it…This is not an eating disorder issue, however, and it should not be only us who know this and speak out about it. These are medical, social, and ultimately self-defeating errors in thinking that do harm to all children and all of us. I am very sad today.”

Jezebel brings up the fair point (via Fox News Channel contributor Michelle Malkin) that perhaps in “revealing that her children have had weight issues too” Michelle Obama is “exposing her children to scrutiny at an early age.” Judging from the over-scrutinized lives of other White House daughters—from Amy Carter to Chelsea Clinton to the Bush twins—that’s one fate the Obamas might want to avoid whenever possible.

Mrs. Obama also sat down for a revealing interview on “The Today Show” (see clip below), where she talked about keeping Sasha and Malia grounded, finding time for dinner, and handling the pressures of being a style icon.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/paren...l-good-579635/

SEIU fatcats behind First Lady’s anti-obesity campaign

Behind every seemingly good deed in the Obama White House, there’s a deep-pocketed, left-wing special interest. Take First Lady Michelle Obama’s crusade against childhood obesity. Who really benefits from the ostensible push for improved nutrition in the schools? Think purple – as in the purple-shirted army of the Service Employees International Union. Big Labor bigwigs don’t care about slimming your kids’ waistlines. They care about beefing up their membership rolls and fattening their coffers.

Mrs. Obama earned a State of the Union Address shout-out from her hubby for taking on the weighty public policy issue of students’ physical fitness. The East Wing is now in full campaign mode – leaning on the nation’s mayors, traveling with the Surgeon General, and meeting with Congress and cabinet members to reauthorize the Lyndon Johnson-era Child Nutrition Act, which provides government-subsidized meals to more than 30 million children. It’s part of the Obama administration’s self-proclaimed “cradle-to-career” agenda for America’s youth.

For decades, this Great Society relic has been criticized by school administrators for outgrowing its initial conception. The program was originally created to use up post-World War II food surpluses. In the late 1970s, New York principal Lewis Lyman skewered it as a federal “boondoggle” in a seminal essay for the education journal, Phi Delta Kappan. But Democrats demagogued the GOP’s responsible attempts at financial reform during the Clinton years as “starving the children.” While spending on youth nutrition and wellness have ballooned, so have the kids. Nearly one-third of U.S. children are now overweight or obese. The feds spend $15 billion a year on nutrition in schools; the White House wants at least a $1 billion increase this coming fiscal year.

The well-intended program to feed poor kids has morphed into an untouchable universal entitlement with a powerful school lunch lobbying coalition of Department of Agriculture bureaucrats, food-service industry executives, and union bosses. Enter the SEIU. Headed up by the White House’s most frequent visitor, Andy Stern, the powerful labor organization representing government and private service employees has an insatiable appetite for power and growth. Working alongside the First Lady, the SEIU unveiled a major ad campaign this week demanding reauthorizing and funding increases in the Child Nutrition Act.

What’s in it for Big Labor?

SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman explains: “A more robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and WIC [the federal Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program] is critical to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity, and providing fair wages and healthcare for front line food service workers (emphasis added).”

There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more. “More robust expansion” of the federal school lunch law means a mandate for higher wages, increased benefits, and government-guaranteed health insurance coverage (the more luxurious the better now that SEIU has negotiated its Cadillac Tax exemption from the Democrats’ health care takeover bill).

The SEIU’s front group, “Campaign for Quality Services,” is clamoring for “the right to sick days and training” for school food-services workers. Never ones to let a crisis go unexploited, SEIU sent its members to lobby in front of Chicago public schools last year and scare parents into supporting their labor agenda. They accused the school system of “putting our kids at risk” during flu season by resisting the SEIU’s sick day coverage demands. “Without sick days, I can’t take a day off, so I have to bring germs to school,” an SEIU janitor lamented.

Along the same lines, they are casting food-services workers as indispensable saviors. The union has rallied behind p.r. efforts casting them as superheroes “serving justice, and serving lunch.” Opposing the union means opposing children’s health. SEIU propaganda features New Jersey school cafeteria workers like Leslie Williams of Orange, N.J. lamenting: “I love my work, but it’s getting harder to prepare nutritious meals on the low budget we’re working with…It breaks my heart to see a child who’s hungry. As I see it, part of my job is to make sure the kids are well-fed.”

Actually, that’s the primary job of parents.

Mom? Dad? Remember them?

But the more responsibility we demand of parents, the less power and influence SEIU bosses are able to grab. Unionized school dietician and nutrition jobs are booming.

And in addition to school breakfast and lunch, the SEIU is now pushing subsidized dinner plans and summer food service to create a “stronger nutrition safety net.” Translation: Perpetual employment for big government and its public employee union au pairs.

Cede the children, feed the state.

3 Home Habits Help Youngsters Stay Slim
By Serena Gordon, HealthDay Reporter
Mon Feb 8, 6:03 AM PST

MONDAY, Feb. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Something as simple as sitting down to dinner together as a family can go a long way in helping a child fend off obesity.

That's just one of the findings from new research that suggests that family behaviors can have a significant impact on the weight of preschool children. Other behaviors that may help youngsters stay slim include getting adequate sleep and limiting time in front of the TV. "Four-year-olds who regularly ate dinner with the family, got enough sleep and watched less than two hours of TV a day were 40 percent less likely to be obese," said the study's lead author, Sarah Anderson, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health at Ohio State University in Columbus.

"One of the things that's potentially useful about recommending these routines, if they're suggested as part of obesity-prevention counseling, is that they may have other benefits, too. And, for pediatricians and other clinicians, we don't have easy, effective treatments for obesity in children, so it's very important to try to prevent obesity," said Anderson.


Results of the study are scheduled to be published in the March issue of Pediatrics.


The study included a nationally representative sample of 8,550 four-year-old children. One parent of each child answered researchers' questions about the family's routines and behaviors.

From this group of children, 18 percent were considered obese, which means their body mass index (a measurement that includes weight and height) is greater than the 95th percentile when compared to others of their age and gender.


Just 14.5 percent of the children were exposed to all three of the study behaviors on a regular basis: Eating the evening meal as a family five or more nights a week, getting more than 10.5 hours of sleep per night, and watching less than two hours of TV, video or DVDs a day.


The researchers found that in children routinely exposed to all three of these behaviors, the obesity rate was 14.3 percent. In children who weren't exposed to any of these behaviors, the obesity rate was 24.5 percent.


Anderson said that each behavior was associated with a 17 percent reduction in the risk in obesity.


These findings held true even when the researchers controlled for factors that may affect a child's risk of obesity, including maternal obesity, race, gender, socioeconomic status and living in a single-parent household.


Anderson pointed out that this study could only find an association between these behaviors and a child's risk of obesity. The study was not designed to assess cause and effect.


"We don't know if it's the routines per se, or if it's the parenting associated with these routines or something else correlated with these routines, but we do know these routines are associated with a lower incidence of obesity," said Anderson.


"These are relatively simple things that you can do in your home that change the health environment of your child. Not only will it help your child with obesity risk, but plenty of other studies have shown that it will also help with behavior and cognitive development. These are great changes to make if they're not already in place," said Dr. Jennifer Helmcamp, a pediatrician and director of the Jump Start Pediatric Weight Management Clinic at Scott & White Healthcare in Round Rock, Texas.


If it seems impossible to institute all three of these behaviors, Anderson said that any one of them alone can have an effect. "Each of these routines was related to a lower risk of obesity, so you can choose to try the one that you think you'll have the most success with. If you're already doing one, consider doing another," she suggested.


Helmcamp said it can be hard to institute some of these behaviors. But she suggested that parents "make these behaviors a priority. Sit down and figure out how you can make it happen. Maybe your child doesn't need to be involved in four or five different activities."


She said if it's tough to eat together five times a week, shoot for at least three nights a week. And, she also recommended removing TVs from children's bedrooms, which can help with limiting screen time and with getting enough sleep.


A second study in the March issue of Pediatrics found that preschoolers aren't the only age group that can be influenced with positive behaviors. This study, which included 81 obese teenaged girls, found that when girls read a book that featured an overweight girl who learns about nutrition, physical activity and improving her self-esteem, readers reduced their body mass index percentile more than girls who didn't read the book.

More information - Learn more about overweight and obesity in children from the Nemours Foundation's KidsHealth Web site. 3homehabitshelpyoungstersstayslim/35033457/SIG=123m2kp3u;_ylt=ArnfDsuMRzNF0taKO.1HJzKDkIt4/*http://kidshealth.org/parent/general...t_obesity.html



http://health.yahoo.com/news/healthd...sstayslim.html

Ok government does enough in schools trying to teach healthy eating habits etc. if they want to start handing out fresh fruit an veggies to everyone I'm all for it, but I do not want some government official telling me my children are overweight, thats what their pediatrician is for. My oldest son is overweight, we feed him healthy snacks, he participates in sports, he is still a husky kid, guess what, his daddy and uncles were built the exact same way until they were 12-13 yrs old then they shot up and it all evened out. Fact is some kids are genetically predetermined to be slightly or more overweight, I'm sure there are kids out there that don't snack on doughnuts and soda but are still a little overweight due to lack of physical activity or genetic issues. It just pisses me off that the government wants to step in and tell me what they think my child should weigh. as long as my pediatrician says hes healthy by God leave us the hell alone. Go make sure everyone has food in this country, go make sure our homeless veterans have a place to lay their heads, forget all the important stuff like ending war, keeping our citizens safe, lets worry about how much kids weigh. Government you take care of your buisness, leave my kids weight to me and my dr.

First Lady Links Childhood Obesity to National Security in Launch of ‘Let’s Move’ Campaign
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – At a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to end childhood obesity in the United States, an epidemic she said is costly and a threat to national security.

“A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year,” Mrs. Obama said. “This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.”

The ceremony, attended by many officials of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, followed the signing earlier in the day of a presidential memorandum establishing a task force to study the problem and make recommendations after 90 days.

Obama announced a long list of goals she said she hopes the “Let’s Move” campaign will accomplish, including many that can be done “in a generation.”

“This isn’t like a disease where we’re still waiting for a cure to be discovered – we know the cure for this,” Obama said. “This isn’t like putting a man on the moon or inventing the Internet. It doesn’t take some stroke of genius or feat of technology. We have everything we need, right now, to help our kids lead healthy lives,” Obama said.

Some of the goals include ending what Obama referred to as “food deserts” with a $400 million a year “Healthy Food Financing Initiative,” which will bring grocery stores to low-income neighborhoods and “help places like convenience stores carry healthier food options.”

Obama called for overhauling many federal laws and guidelines, including adding $10 billion over the next decade to “update” the Childhood Nutrition Act, which feeds 31 million children at school and would add funding to feed more children. The federal food pyramid would also get a makeover through the campaign, and there would be new efforts to get manufacturers to add “family friendly front-of-package labeling” that discloses a product’s nutritional value.

The First Lady said a broad coalition of groups interested in children’s health are coming together to form the Partnership for a Healthier America, which will use professional athletes, members of the media, and state and local dignitaries to promote the “Let’s Move” campaign and its goals around the country.

Obama used anecdotal details from her own life to explain the challenges faced by overworked parents and children who spend too much time watching TV or playing video games because their neighborhoods are unsafe for playing outside. “So many parents desperately want to do the right thing, but they feel like the deck is stacked against them,” Obama said. “They know their kids’ health is their responsibility but they feel like it’s out of their control. They are bombarded by contradictory information at every turn, and they don’t know who to believe,” she said.

Obama said before she lived in the White House she struggled to balance the demands of working and being a mother, and occasionally fed her two daughters fast food or “less healthy microwavable options.” “And one day,” she said, “my pediatrician pulled me aside and told me, ‘You might want to think about doing things a little bit differently.’”

She said it was a wake-up call and that the nation should see childhood obesity as a wake-up call, including the fact that children are victims of the epidemic. “Our kids did not do this to themselves,” Obama said. “Our kids don’t decide what’s served to them at school or whether there’s time for gym classes or recess. Our kids don’t choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions, and then to have those products marketed to them everywhere they turn. And no matter how much they beg for pizza, fries and candy, ultimately, they are not, and should not, be the ones calling the shots at dinnertime,” she said.

A new Web site has also been launched in conjunction with the campaign, http://www.letsmove.gov.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/61157