With nearly 33% of children in America considered to be overweight or obese - a rate that has tripled in adolescents and more than doubled in younger children since 1980 - an Obama Administration task force recently established a goal of reducing the childhood obesity rate to just 5% by 2030, less than a generation away.
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According to C & R's Youth Beat, kids eat at a restaurant 2.5 times a month. In an average 30-day month, there are 150 meal occasions:
- 30 Breakfasts
- 30 Lunches
- 30 Dinners
- 60 Snacks (at twice a day)
If kids are only going to restaurants 2-3 times a month, they account for only
2 percent of all meal occasions.
To read more, download the pdf
President Bill Clinton Honors 179 U.S.
Schools
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, founded by the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, today recognized 179 schools that have transformed their campuses into healthier places for students and staff.
To read more, download the pdf
Here is a blog post from Nanny State Liberation Front about the different tests for body mass index (BMI) that can embarrass overweight children. Some of these tests are becoming required in physical education classes and can put children in a very uncomfortable position in front of their classmates. Many children already struggle with self-esteem and fitting in with their peers and do not need a test to “prove” why they should be insecure.
It’s not enough for a fat kid with a bulging belly and triple chins to be standing right in front of an anti-obesity crusader to reach the obvious conclusion. Common sense has clearly gone out the window and, these days, it’s about driving the point home to parents with ‘irrefutable’ scientific data by subjecting their pudgy children to humiliating measuring techniques.
Most prominent of the obesity measuring tools are the Body Mass Indicator (BMI) calipers that pinch folds of fat on various parts of kids’ bodies. Anyone who’s been in gym class over the past two decades has probably come in contact with the BMI pinchers while standing in front of their classmates. And, if you were a heavy kid, chances are you didn’t feel comfortable wondering if others were looking on and laughing while the gym teacher pulled cellulite away from your extremities.
Commenting on the subject of BMI caliper tests in middle school, “bethmiller” wrote on the “Shapely Prose” blog, “When I was in middle school they made us take the ‘fat test’ in front of the whole class, it was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. When I first learned that this was a legitimate ‘test’ I was mortified by it and then tortured with it for three years.”
