Posts Tagged ‘health blogs’
President Obama Declares September “Childhood Obesity Awareness Month”
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Yesterday, President Obama declared  September 2010 as “National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month” to draw attention to the fact that one out of every three American children are now considered overweight or obese.
“One of the greatest responsibilities we have as a Nation is to safeguard the health and well-being of our children. We now face a national childhood obesity crisis, with nearly one in every three of America’s children being overweight or obese. There are concrete steps we can take right away as concerned parents, caregivers, educators, loved ones, and a Nation to ensure that our children are able to live full and active lives. During National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, I urge all Americans to take action to meet our national goal of solving the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.”
This proclamation also mentioned First Lady, Michelle Obama’s, “Let’s Move Campaign,” an initiative to combat childhood obesity at every stage of a child’s life, as well as the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which includes a number of important tools for fighting and reversing the rise of childhood obesity, Including that all new health insurance plans will be required to cover both screenings for childhood obesity and counseling on nutrition and sustained weight loss, without charging any out of pocket costs.
Read entire proclamation.
Will Kids Want to Choose a Healthier Option for a Toy?
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
September 2, 2010
I would like to share a blog post written by Katherine Hobson at the Wall Street Journal about the recent Toy Ban in California. This blog is related to kids marketing, however, this is not the issue in San Francisco. The politicians who support the Toy Ban are banking on big financial pay-offs in their upcoming elections. The legislation is not regarding kids or obesity, but rather for us to choose why we need elected officials who think they should supersede parental rights. Maybe we need elected officials who concern themselves with protecting our families from high crime, prostitution, poor health care, illegal immigrants and improving education.
If passed, legislation introduced in San Francisco — contrary to what you may have heard — would not pry your McDonald’s Happy Meal toys out of your cold, dead hands. What it would do, however, is to keep the trinkets out of meals that don’t meet a set of nutritional standards.
As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, there would be a 600-calorie cap on the entire meal, with no one item containing more than 200 calories. There would be sodium and fat limits, too, and the meal would have to include fruits and veggies. Only a few types of Happy Meals would qualify, the paper says, and promotions from Burger King and Jack in the Box would also be affected.
Read more.
Parents Say: Ban The Toys If You Want … My Kids Will Still Ask for Happy Meals
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
September 1, 2010
I would like to share a blog post on blogher.com by Jill Miller Zimon regarding some of the opinions from parents surrounding the recent San Francisco Toy Ban legislation.
The toy ban that is trying to be passed through legislation will ban an “incentive” (aka toys), if a single food item has more than 200 calories or if the entire meal is more than 600 calories, which means too bad for children who choose McDonalds…a typical hamburger has at least 250 calories!  There will also be limits on fat and sodium intake as well.
The legislation has gained attention of many bloggers following the subject with several different opinions. In reply to an Eat Drink Better post by Jeannie Moulton, a follower stated:
“Ban the toys if you want … my kids would ask for Happy Meals even if they came without a toy. They actually enjoy that conglomeration of chemicals & processed food particles that McDonald’s calls chicken nuggets. But as their PARENT, I make the CHOICE not to feed them that garbage except on extremely rare occasions, even though they often whine & beg. Not only that, I EXPLAIN to them WHY I don’t allow them to have it. That’s really the problem here — toys may be a marketing tool to encourage children to ask their parents for a product … but ultimately it’s up to the parent to say NO, not the government to make laws banning toys or even ingredients.”
Read more.