Focus
It would seem that nearly everyone has an opinion about the causes of children’s weight gains and obesity but no one has found a way to address it.
Food issues become more like food fights—who is right about the way to solve the problem?
Michele Obama has been criticized by a prominent nutritionist for saying that small changes help. Kids, skip the cookie. It’s true that the problem is significant enough that skipping cookies will not change course.
But it is a start. Don’t we have to start?
Yet a common sense suggestion became news. This is a debate? Doctors have been saying small changes help make change—for all kinds of risk factors or illnesses which require behavior changes—for years.This is how one forms new habits that last. Small changes lead to bigger, longer-lasting ones. Ask Weight Watchers.
Absent consensus, there is nothing to do but keep the dialogue going. Surely people will arrive at solutions which can work for them. Healthy eating begins at home. Parents can see cause-and-effect relationships between their strategies and the number on the scale.
New research just out appears in the March issue of the Journal of Health Affairs is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Its focus is childhood overweight and obesity.
“Kids are becoming obese or overweight at the ripe old age of four, meaning that they are already predisposed to shorter, sicker lives from diabetes, heart problems, even certain types of cancer,” writes Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Susan Dentzer. “What is this crisis if not some national form of child abuse?” (Emphasis added)
“ American kids snack three times a day and chips, candy and other junk foods now account for more than 27 percent of children’s daily caloric intake, according to a new study released Tuesday.
“The new research comes as childhood obesity is soaring in the U.S. with more than 12 million American children – roughly 17 percent – considered overweight.
“The spike in snacking added 168 calories per day to kids’ diets between 1977 and 2006, according to Carmen Piernas and Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina reported.”
Source: CBS News, March 2, 2010
Citation: Health Affairs, 29, no. 3 (2010): 342 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0152
