The Growing Problem of Childhood Obesity: How we can all work together to stop this epidemic
by Catherine Morgan

We have a growing problem in the United States, it is the epidemic of childhood obesity. It's a problem we can no longer ignore.[img_assist|fid=4117|thumb=0|alt=The WE CAN Logo]

The percentage of children and teens that are overweight has more than doubled in the past 30 years. Today, about 17 percent of American children ages 2-19 are overweight. -- read more

This is a problem rooted deep in our current culture, habits, and lifestyles, and it won’t correct itself, we all need to take an active roll in being part of the solution. And WE CAN, we owe it to the children of our country.

For children, overweight also increases their health risks. Type 2 diabetes was once rare in American children—now it accounts for 8 to 45 percent of newly diagnosed diabetes cases in children and adolescents. And, overweight children are more likely to become overweight or obese as adults. -- read more

Let me tell you about the WE CAN campaign (a web-site, and a program) that will help us understand this problem while also providing easy solutions and corrective measures that we can all make to combat it.

We Can! has produced a 60-second animated presentation that highlights the importance of preventing overweight and obesity for families.

This program is designed to help families...

Parents, other family members, and caregivers play an important role in the health of children. We Can! helps families be more successful in adapting healthy choices and making changes at home.

We Can! provides science-based information about overweight and ways to prevent it with tips and ideas for you and your family to eat better, move more, and spend less time sitting and watching television. It is NOT a weight loss program, but an educational resource to help you and your family choose healthier, more active ways of enjoying life.

How the public, organizations, schools, and even whole communities can help...

We Can! is a turn-key, science-based program that provides you with the resources you need to help your community address the important issue of childhood overweight and obesity.

The flexible program allows almost any group or organization to sign up to become a We Can! community site and run the program.

What health care professionals can do to help...

Parents turn to health professionals as a trusted source for accurate health information and guidance on their child's health. We Can! can help health professionals put the childhood obesity crisis into context in their community and provides materials and resources to empower health professionals to help their patients' families adopt healthy lifestyle habits to prevent health problems associated with overweight, such as diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, and other chronic conditions.

Understanding the demands on health professionals in today's world, the We Can! program offers several opportunities to get involved.

Are you able to be a partner?

The goal of the We Can! partnership is to build collaborations around preventive strategies and outreach efforts, as well as to leverage resources and communication channels to disseminate We Can!

There is also something we as BlogHers can do...

Even if you don't have a site that specifically deals with these issues, you could still write a post to give this important information to your readers, and link to the WE CAN campaign.

A quick surf through the BlogHer blogrolls turned up some interesting sites and posts on childhood nutrition...

The Expatriate's Kitchen -- "Musings on food and life, with my original recipes, and a cynical wit as sharp as my ten-inch French knife." She has many posts on Childhood nutrition.

In a BlogHer post titled School Lunch Stories I found a link to Chef Ann Cooper who is a renegade lunch lady.

Chef Ann works to transform cafeterias into culinary classrooms for students - one school lunch at a time. She brings you information to learn about the importance of changing the way America feeds its children.

Recently Chef Ann posted "Are School Lunches Killing Our Kids?" Her posts also link to many other informative sites.

Amy Jussel has Shaping Youth - a nonprofit concerned with media & marketing’s impact on kids. "We have NO political, religious, or censorship agenda. Our focus is to shift harmful messages in a more positive direction with the help of industry insiders."

Have you or your family been affected by the problem of poor nutrition, Type II Diabetes, or childhood obesity? How are you dealing with these problems? What types of things have you found works best?

And, if you're a BlogHer with a site that focuses on childhood nutrition or childhood obesity, please include a link in the comments of this post. Or, if you were inspired by this post to use your blog in some way to help get the word out about this important problem and the WE CAN Campaign, please also leave your link.

We can all get involved and do our part to help eliminate this growing problem of childhood obesity. Even the smallest gestures can collectively work together to create big changes.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at Women 4 Hope and CatherineBlogs.com

Submitted by Catherine Morgan (view blog) on Fri, 06/01/2007 - 11:29am

Comments

 

Tips/resources for counter-marketing junk
food at Shaping Youth!

Hi Catherine, I wanted to elaborate on what we're doing at http://www.shapingyouth.org in terms of counter-marketing junk food to kids & using media to flip the message in a healthier direction.

Tmrw. I'll post about our new "Shrek Drek" counter-marketing program, to teach kids how to "go green" (honeydew melon, grapes, limeade, etc.) in a monster way, without buying into the gazillion PopTarts, Keebler cookies and snack packs Shrek's promoting. That's one example of the type of program we do. (We use a reality show game format called "Dare to Compare: A Gross Out Game for Good Nutrition" akin to a 'Fear Factor' where kids blindfold/taste test, say 'ewwww' when they see what's really IN the junk food, and get excited about healthier eating.

Related article re: Shrek stumping for sugary snacks while simultaneously promoting 'healthy eating' here: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=404
(Huge mixed message for K-5 kids)

BlogHer readers can click on our "Childhood Obesity" category and find a gazillion more articles about our counter-marketing tactics, as well as our nonprofit's alliances with obesity task force groups and active/fitness orgs to get kids 'moving' in the right direction!

We use marketing and media techniques to 'sell' kids on health and unveil the mktg. methods targeting them w/products like energy/sports drinks & needless doses of sodium, caffeine, & sugar.

Here are some of the articles they can find on our Shaping Youth site:

Online Nutrition Calculators: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=436

Healthy Product Presentation: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=346

Snack Attack: Counter-Marketing 'sports team junk snacks'
http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=333

Eat Like An Ape, The media circus at work:
http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=276
etc.

We also cover kids' body image, portion distortion, behavioral cues & the physical and emotional impact of media/mktg's influence on kids (e.g. POSITIVE picks AND damaging drek!)

Thanks for stopping by...I'd love to tell you more...and learn how to use BlogHer more effectively to get the word out...(I'm a bit of a neophyte where the consolidation of content occurs) We partner with Common Sense Media and such, and are in 'pre-launch' phase of taking our counter-marketing programs global. Meanwhile, please consider us a resource for you in the nutritional arena for certain! Best, Amy

Amy Jussel
Shaping Youth

Submitted by Shaping Youth on Mon, 06/04/2007 - 13:08
 

Thanks for all the great links.

Thanks Amy. What you are doing at "Shaping Youth" is very important, thanks for all the links.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at Women 4 Hope and CatherineBlogs.com

Submitted by Catherine Morgan on Mon, 06/04/2007 - 15:34
 

Thanks for the link!

Any parent who is interested in learning more on this topic may find the articles in the series I posted helpful. Please keep me posted on this topic and let me know how I can be of help.

The State of Our Union’s Children
A detailed overview of what trends are occurring in our children's diets, and the factors that contribute to the issues

Our Children Are What They Eat
A look at what our children are eating and the nutritional issues parents face.

Why Kids Eat What They Do (or Don’t) Part I: Parents' Role
A look at all the sources of dietary influence on our children's food choices. Part I includes the parents' role in influencing our children's diets.

Why Kids Eat What They Do (or Don’t) Part II: Outside Influences
A look at all the other sources of dietary influence on our children's food choices. This includes schools, social activity, marketing, food supply, culture. The post will examine each of the outside influences and how it affects our kids.

Food Marketing and Your Child Part I: The Small Screen with Big Impact
This topic belongs under the sources post, but it has become such a huge issue that it needs to be reviewed in depth. An estimated $12 billion is spent anually to market foods to children and youth. Often these marketing messages are targeted to pre-schoolers who are too young to be able to differentiate commercial messages from educational messages. Part I covers television advertising.

Food Marketing and Your Child Part II: When the TV is Off, the Marketing is Still On
Part II covers all the other forms of advertising, including marketing in our schools.

We Shall Overcome: Recommendations for Parents
A set of ten actionable steps we can take as parents to encourage a better diet and lifestyle for our children and minimize the impact of food marketing to our kids.

Submitted by ExpatChef on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 08:58
 

Thanks for adding all these great links.

Thanks so much for taking the time to add all these great links.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at Women 4 Hope and CatherineBlogs.com

Submitted by Catherine Morgan on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 11:29
 

Side by Side Study Comparison of Food
Advertising on TV

One more link hot off the press from Kaiser Family Foundation lined up next to the FTC study on kids exposure to food ads: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/7654.pdf

Both significant new studies; a few minor differences in findings/methodology, and some hairsplitting numbers on 'exposure to ads' ages 2-11: (Food TV ads: 5500/yr vs. 5600/yr.; all TV ads: 18,000/yr vs. 20,000/yr.)

I'll be blogging this at Shaping Youth soon, but am putting the finishing touches on "getting kids to eat green, using Shrek" (green goddess swamps; cucumber lily pads, etc.) and counter-marketing 'Shrek Drek' PopTarts & crud for our session on Thursday)

Amy Jussel
Shaping Youth

Submitted by Shaping Youth on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 19:34
 

Childs Height and Weight Tracking Service is
in the Works

Catherine,
Great post! Just to let you know there are men out there also interested and concerned about this topic. My company is in the process of developing a database service to help Head Start Organizations, Child Care Practitioners and Parents track their child’s growth and development. The service calculates the child’s percentiles, which is basically a comparison to the national average, to determine whether a child is in the obesity danger zone.

The statistics are provided by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Our main website is www.bluebeanstalk.com and our blog, for right now, is www.bluebeanstalk.blogspot.com. We are very new and we hope the service will be up and running within one to two months. Until then please feel free to visit our blog.

Thanks
Marvin

Submitted by marvinq on Mon, 06/11/2007 - 14:42
 

Thanks Marvin.

Thanks Marvin. These are both great links, thanks for sharing them here.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at Women 4 Hope and CatherineBlogs.com

Submitted by Catherine Morgan on Mon, 06/11/2007 - 15:23
 

Encouraging Physical Activity in Your Child

I just completed a post that some of the moms here might find interesting. It discusses the most effective things we can do as parents to make sure we have active kids.

Following in Your Footsteps, Literally: Building a Commitment to Physical Activity in Your Children

Submitted by ExpatChef on Thu, 07/05/2007 - 12:55
 

Thanks for the link...

Thanks for the link, I'm sure others will appreciate it too.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at Women 4 Hope and CatherineBlogs.com

Submitted by Catherine Morgan on Thu, 07/05/2007 - 13:03