"childhood obesity" news and stories

Congressional approval of the Child Nutrition Bill isn't the only good news for school lunch reform advocates. Word is, there's even more substantial help on the way.

FoodCorps, a new national AmeriCorps school-garden and farm-to-school service program, recently announced partnerships with 10 organizations to effectively springboard their mission: healthier, tastier, more nutritious lunches for our nation's most vulnerable children. Think of it like a domestic Peace Corp, but with a focus on getting healthy food to those who need it most. The numbers are grim. According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in three children born in 2000 are on track to develop Type II diabetes. For minorities, the rate is one in two.

To address the problem, FoodCorps has committed to place 82 service members on the ground, dedicating nearly 140,000 hours of service. Some of their work will include building and tending school gardens, conducting nutrition and education seminars, and improving the quality of the food served. The program will operate on the academic calendar, so service members will be shovel-ready by August 2011.

"We're doing the recruiting work now, and are on the look out for 82 highly qualified, enthusiastic leaders," Curt Ellis, FoodCorps founder and co-creator of the documentary film, King Corn told Slashfood in an interview.

The French have long inspired bafflement among researchers (and envy in the rest of the Western world) for their ability to scarf down the sort of high-fat cuisine that is at the heart of their national identity (beef bourguignon, foie gras) without packing on extra pounds or dropping dead, en masse, from heart attacks.

But that appears to be changing.

Faced with the news that the obesity rate in France has almost doubled in the past decade, president Nicolas Sarkozy announced in June that he was setting aside nearly 150 million euros to address the problem of the country's ever-expanding waistline, according to Global Post.

For more than 7,000 French students heading back to school, that means a new program aimed at increasing physical activity. (In English, it translates to "Morning Classes, Afternoon Sports"; no doubt it sounds better in French.)

As for the rest of the country, well...it seems the government is still scratching its head.

The man whose been tapped to lead the charge in France's latest battle of the bulge, Arnaud Basdevant, says the government's plan is to create new medical facilities to treat obesity, to implement some sort of prevention campaign, and, of course, to study the problem further.

The lack of a profound sense of urgency may at first seem like just another charming aspect of the French national character (like a penchant for transit strikes), but here they may have science to back them up. At 14.5 percent, the obesity rate among adults in France is roughly what the American rate was a full 30 years ago. (Today, the U.S. rate is more than twice that.)

So it seems that everyone in France has time for a few more buttery croissants.

Dr. Mehmet Oz and Rachael Ray. Photo: Jennifer Lawinski

Even presidents know it's hard to get kids to eat their vegetables.

Former President Bill Clinton told parents a gymnasium full of parents in Harlem Saturday that he shared their struggles with finding and committing to healthy eating. Getting kids to eat fruits and vegetables is hard, he said. "Especially in Harlem, where I can say we have a lot of other options and they all taste good."

The talk was part of the the New York City Wine and Food Festival's Weight Watcher's Fun and Fit in the City event, targeted at combating childhood obesity and promoting healthy eating for the city's kids. The ex-president's foundation is headquartered in Harlem, and its top priority in the U.S. is the fight against childhood obesity.

"Hey, your kids are obese!"

Out of politeness, we normally don't point and scream such obvious statements to the people around us, but we just might have to. It seems that many parents are in total denial about their own children's obesity.

Research firm Knowledge Networks conducted a survey of 2,060 adults then collected height and weight measurements on the children from their parents to calculate body mass index. The comparison of what parents said about their children's weight -- "about right," "slightly overweight," "very overweight" -- was different from what the research firm calculated.

That's slightly alarming, given that obese children are susceptible to diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol problems. Overweight children are likely to grow up to be overweight adults with the same issues. What's more alarming is that children are open to changing their dietary habits to improve, but if their parents don't help them because they can't even see a problem, well, then, that's a problem.

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Now that we are facing all kinds of bans on junk foods from schools, a new product has come to take the place of sodas, long blamed for childhood obesity: good old milk.

In October of this year, Bravo Foods International Corporation will begin shipping a new drink called Slammers. These 8 oz. "snowman-shaped" bottles are manufactured so that fit into the same slot that currently holds a 12 oz. can of soda in vending machines. Slammers are 99% fat free milk, have no preservatives, do not need to be refrigerated (which I can't figure out since the product is milk), and have a shelf-life of 6 months.

Hopefully,the different flavors will be cool enough to help kids forget about sodas: 3 Musketeers flavored chocolate milk, Coco Puffs,Trix, Vanilla, Hard Chocolate, and Scrochin' Strawberry.

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