RSS Obesity Solvers on Facebook Obesity Solvers on Twitter YouTube

What You Can Do To Fight Childhood Obesity

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.
To read more, download the pdf




Twitter Feed

Obesity Solvers on Twitter No tweets available at the moment.

Facebook

Obesity Solvers on Facebook Join us on Facebook

Facts About Childhood Obesity

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


Freetochooseourmeals.com

Blogroll



Media Contact

Valerie Jennings
Phone: 816-221-1040
Email: valerie@jenningssocialmedia.com

Blogarama - The Blog Directory
Blog Directory
Business Blogs - Blog Rankings
Health
Business blogs

Posts Tagged ‘McDonalds nutrition facts’

San Francisco Delays Vote On Controversial Toy Ban

Monday, October 25th, 2010

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to postpone the vote on the Toy Ban until November 2, Election Day.
 San Francisco Delays Vote On Controversial Toy Ban
A recent article from food.change.org by David Orr states, “Well, it’s probably just a political calculation. Outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom has promised a veto, and only 7 of the 8 required votes to overturn a veto are secured. Putting off the vote until after Election Day could make it a little easier to vote in favor of this bill. It could also be a sort of gift to Mayor Newsom, who is currently running for Lt. Governor of the state and has been labeled by his opponent as ‘chief of the food police.’ Politics will be politics, but the important point is that this legislation has a real chance of being passed.”
Read More:

Mar Asks For Two-Week Continuance On October 19th's Scheduled Vote On Controversial Toy Ban Legislation

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

In a new sfgate.com blog post, Rachel Gordon discusses the recent events surrounding the San Fransisco Toy ban, that if passed, would take away any fast food marketing promotions in kids meals.  According to recent reports, supervisor and creator of the controversial toy ban legislation has asked for a two-week continuance in hopes to secure a veto-proof majority.

mcdonalds american idol Mar Asks For Two Week Continuance On October 19th's Scheduled Vote On Controversial Toy Ban Legislation

According to  Rachel Gordon, Mar asked that the vote be delayed until Nov. 2, Election Day, which might be nice for Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is in a tough race for lieutenant governor.  Newsom’s Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, has attacked Newsom for being ”chief of the food police,” referring to the mayor’s earlier efforts to curb high-sugar sodas and to promote the slow-food movement.

Delayed or not, Mar still needs eight votes on the 11-member board to override Mayor Gavin Newsom’s promised veto. The target of his quest for the crucial eighth vote is Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who said he is undecided. Dufty said Monday that he has been getting pressure from both sides of the debate.

Read More

San Francisco Board of Supervisors to Extend Toy Ban Legislation to Include Fast Food Breakfast Items Marketed To Adults

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

According to the Nanny State Liberation Front, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is  not only going after kids meals, but certain breakfast items marketed to adults as well. The article states that a Sept. 27 amendment was added to the city’s proposed Happy Meal Toy Ban ordinance. “A new category of items — breakfast items — are required to contain 0.5 cups of fruit.” Additionally, the amendment demands that the hamburger buns or other sandwich breads used in the meals must contain at least 50 percent whole wheat.

breakfast value menu 300x201 San Francisco Board of Supervisors to Extend Toy Ban Legislation to Include Fast Food Breakfast Items Marketed To Adults

One has to wonder what the reason is for including restrictions on the breakfast meal breads seeing that adult customers do not purchase fast-food breakfast meals because of toy incentives.

Read More

Editorial: Children's Health and Fitness Habits Begin at Home

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Here is an article from greenbaypressgazette.com about how health and fitness should start at homes, not at McDonald’s. Eating fast-food is not the only cause of childhood obesity: lack of exercise, emotional and environmental factors are causes as well.

According to a Harokopio University study, children are more than 2.4 times likely to be overweight if they have obese parents, which can cause lifelong struggles.

The fight to solve obesity needs to start with parents and communities by choosing healthier meal choices and increase physical activity at home and school. It is ultimately the public and consumers who should decide what their meal options are not CSPI.

kids play 300x194 Editorial: Children's Health and Fitness Habits Begin at Home

Editorial: Children’s health and fitness habits begin at home

An advocacy group’s threat to sue McDonald’s over Happy Meal toys can further the dialogue about childhood obesity, but real change around raising healthy kids needs to start at home.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest recently announced its intent to bring suit against the fast-food behemoth unless McDonald’s stops marketing unhealthy food to children through the inclusion of toys in Happy Meals. In a release, the group “urged McDonald’s to stop undermining parents and deceiving children” with inexpensive toys like those from the latest “Shrek” film.

“While Shrek may appear on packaging for low-fat milk and Apple Dippers,” the group states, “when children or parents order Happy Meals they are given French fries 93 percent of the time, and offered soda first 78 percent of the time.”

Whatever numbers one uses, the bottom line is health and fitness habits need to start at home, not in line at the Golden Arches. It’s no secret that a good deal of fast-food fare is fat- and calorie-laden and nutritionally deficient, and that countless experts point to eating on the go as a major contributing factor to the nation’s childhood obesity epidemic.

But we also know eating out is only one piece of an incredibly complex childhood health puzzle that also includes holistic nutrition, exercise, and emotional and environmental factors. Removing a plastic ogre from your child’s lunch can have at best a marginal impact.

We encourage parents to make smart choices when eating out, including when it comes to consumption of fast food and other nutritionally questionable fare. But we also urge them to take a look at their own behaviors and what’s going on at home in terms of eating and exercise.

Research like a 2004 study from Harokopio University in Athens, Greece, bears out that parents matter when it comes to their children’s health. That study found children with one obese parent were almost twice as likely to be overweight than children of normal-weight parents. Children with two obese parents were 2.4 times more likely to be overweight.

(Read more)

Study Finds Childhood Obesity Declining by 4 Percent

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Here is an article from The Philadelphia Inquirer written by Don Sapatkin about how a recent study show that childhood obesity has decreased by 4 percent. Gary D. Foster, director of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education, said the research was conducted to determine if schools could effectively increase healthier food in cafeteria and physical activity, which could control obesity and health risks such as Type 2 diabetes. The study concluded that school health act programs can help solve the obesity epidemic.

Study finds childhood obesity declining by 4 percent

happy kids small1 300x300 Study Finds Childhood Obesity Declining by 4 Percent

Tantalizing evidence that America’s epidemic of childhood obesity might be starting to subside was presented Sunday by researchers who also found that the trend could be speeded up through school programs.

Several recent studies reported that rates of overweight and obese children plateaued after rising rapidly since 1980. But this is the first major study to detect a decline – of 4 percent – and it was in a national sample dominated by low-income blacks and Hispanics, the groups at highest risk.

“These are the kids you expect least to change,” said Gary D. Foster, director of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education, who chaired the study of 4,603 students in 42 middle schools around the country, including six in Philadelphia. He and others speculated that the decline might be greater in the general population.

Though good news, the finding was not what the researchers were looking for. Their primary goal was to determine whether an intensive, school-based effort to decrease calories and increase physical activity could make a dent in the combined prevalence of children who are overweight and obese, key risk factors for Type 2 diabetes.

In fall 2006, they divided the schools into two groups. The sixth graders in half the schools participated in the program; the other half were controls. When they were reassessed as eighth graders in spring 2009, the rate of overweight and obese students had dropped by nearly the same 4 percent in the schools that got the intervention as in those that did not.

However, the researchers did find notable differences among subgroups and in specific measures. For example, body-mass index scores, average insulin levels and the percentage of students with the largest waists – all risk factors for Type 2 diabetes – were significantly better in the intervention schools. All the effects were even stronger among students who were overweight or obese when they began the program in sixth grade. That group, in fact, had 21 percent lower odds of being obese at the end of eighth grade compared with the controls.

Foster and colleagues presented the findings Sunday at the association’s annual scientific meeting in Orlando. Underscoring their significance, the results were simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Type 2 diabetes, until recently seen only in adults, has been increasing steadily in children and teenagers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that one of every three children born in 2000, and one of every two children in high-risk minority groups, will develop diabetes in their lifetimes. People with Type 2 diabetes gradually lose the ability to produce insulin and are at risk of kidney failure, amputations, blindness, heart disease, and stroke.

(Read more)

About Us

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Hi Readers,

Please let us know what you want to learn more about.  ObesitySolvers is a place for discussion regarding the childhood obesity battle, why we need solutions and why we don’t need more issues about how we choose to eat.  This site will assist in revealing all of the “non-stupid” information surrounding obesity. If you can help solve the obesity battle, please feel free to submit your press releases for review.

Visit www.freetochooseourmeals.com for more details regarding the government’s involvement in regulating what we want to eat. Twitter: @ChooseMeals

Thank you.