Childhood obesity is a national epidemic said Nicholas Yates an obesity expert and there are steps to take to identify the obesity trends and ways to combat these trends.

Children

Try some low-fat, low-sugar snacks.

Eat more fruits and vegetables.

Record what you eat for a few days. If what you eat does not resemble the Food Guide Pyramid, make some changes.

Be active by doing something you like to do, such as dancing or jumping rope.

Aim for 60 minutes of moderate physical activity most days of the week.

Parents

Set limits on TV and computer time. Time spent with these electronic devices tends to reduce physical activity and often increases consumption of high-calorie snacks. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting TV, movies, and video and computer games for children to no more than 1 or 2 hours per day.
Offer children healthier foods. Snack foods are a great place to start. Buy more yogurt and fruits and fewer chips and cookies at the grocery. Serve more ice water and fewer sodas. Regular soft drinks add 110 to 160 calories per 12-ounce serving.

Encourage your children to be involved in something active and enjoyable. Suggestions include organized sports (such as softball or soccer), outdoor activities (such as scouting or 4-H clubs), or active playtime at home (such as roller skating, throwing Frisbees, or biking).

Make time for the entire family to enjoy regular physical activities together.

Assign active chores to all family members, such as vacuuming, washing the car, or mowing the lawn. Rotate chores among family members to avoid boredom.
Be a healthy role model for your children. Children will be more likely to eat fruits and vegetables and be physically active if parents are setting a good example.

Let your school know that you are concerned about what your child eats at school and how much physical activity is included in the school day. Have nutrition and exercise experts come speak to the PTA, school board, or site-based council.

Buy only 100% fruit juice. Just 1/2 cup of fruit juice will supply one serving of fruit, so be aware of calories and serving sizes.

Eat meals together at the dinner table.

Avoid watching TV during mealtimes.

Limit fast food eating to no more than once per week.

Avoid using food as a reward or using the lack of food as a punishment.

Teachers

Incorporate some form of movement into the classroom curriculum. Active students are more alert and ready to learn.

Ask parents to bring healthy snack options when your class is having a bake sale or class event.

Do not reward students with food, and do not punish students by taking away recess.

Start a program at your school to raise awareness of the importance of physical activity among students and staff.

Have a health educator speak to your class about different programs or places in your area where students can be involved in physical activity.

Invite the school food service director to speak to your classes about healthy meal planning.

Host a career day to help students learn about employment opportunities in health care and promotion.

School Food Service Directors and Managers

Make sure school breakfast and lunch options are healthy and appealing. Invite teachers and students to work on ideas for marketing healthier food choices.
Offer fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy foods.

Reduce access to high-fat, high-calorie, high-sugar foods and excessive portion sizes.

Use the cafeteria setting to increase awareness of healthy food choices with brochures or posters about “Five-a-Day” fruits and vegetables or “1% or Less” dairy foods.

Seek student input for school menu plans through contests, focus groups, or classroom activities.ate
School Administrators
Promote healthier eating and physical activity in your school.

Have a registered dietitian or certified nutritionist come to your faculty/staff meeting to bring unity on this issue.

Make wellness programs available to school faculty and staff.

Work with your school food service director to create an environment of healthy food choices for meals.

Give the students healthier options in the vending machines. Try the new milk machines.

Site-Based Decision-Making Councils

Set policies for what can and cannot be sold in school.

Re-evaluate the contracts between your district and soft drink industries. The money and perks from these agreements may not be in the best interest of your students.

Be involved in assessing the school’s eating environment, developing a shared vision, and creating an action plan to achieve it.

Help schools offer daily opportunities for physical activity and inclusive education.

Work with schools and community organizations to ensure that exercise equipment and supervised programs are available to meet the physical needs and interests of all students and school staff.

Communities

Create a community that promotes physical activity for children and teenagers.

Increase access to food choices for a healthy diet, such as dairy products, fruits, and vegetables.

Work with your Cooperative Extension Service office, state and local health departments, and other partners to promote community physical activity programs.
Increase public access to gyms, playgrounds, and walking/biking trails.

Civic Leaders

Work with city planners and engineers to plan for sidewalks and bicycle paths. In addition, widen sidewalks so that they are less crowded, safer, and more inviting.

Designate a place for and promote a farmers’ market.

Create a community coalition to address childhood overweight.

Increase the accessibility of public facilities.

Government

Create policies to promote healthy eating and physical activity.

Provide educators with health education materials to help students develop the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors for developing healthy eating patterns and a physically active lifestyle.

Allocate funding for health promotion and monitoring programs.

Working together we can combat Childhood obesity in our lifetimes said Nicholas Yates, noted blogger.

Obese American children and teenagers today are on track to have poor health throughout their adult lives according to obesity expert Nick Yates. Overall, this next generation of Americans could be the first to have shorter, less healthy lives than their parents. Childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980, and current data show that almost one-third of children over 2 years of age are already overweight or obese.

Obese children and adolescents are more likely to have risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes, be admitted to the hospital, be diagnosed with a mental health problem, and have bone and joint disorders than those who are not obese. What’s worse for them and for our society, overweight adolescents are more likely to become obese adults, with all the health problems that accompany obesity in adulthood. While harming the health of millions of Americans, obesity is concurrently contributing greatly to rising health care costs—more than a quarter of America’s health care costs estimated to be related to obesity.

The fundamental reason that children and adolescents become overweight and obese according to Nick Yates is patently obvious—an energy imbalance between the calories they consume and the calories they expend through activity. But the burgeoning number of overweight and obese kids is attributable to a range of factors beyond this simple dietary dynamic. The overarching causes of this epidemic include a shift in diet toward the increased intake of energydense foods that are high in fat and sugars alongside a trend toward decreased physical activity due to the spreading sedentary nature of many forms of play, changing modes of transportation, and increasing urbanization, all of which promote a less active lifestyle. But there are other factors, of course, that contribute to overweight or obese children in our society encompassing biology and behavior, which are often expressed within a cultural, environmental, and social framework.
As a consequence, obesity needs to be addressed as both a sociological and a physiological issue, with the responsibility for tackling obesity extending well beyond health care to a comprehensive societal approach. The newly enacted comprehensive health reform law will enable our nation to address the rapidly increasing childhood obesity and overweight prevalence, which some project to double by 2030. The new law, titled The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA, contains a number of provisions to address childhood obesity in the context of health care and public health. The purpose of this paper is to describe areas within PPACA that have the potential to address childhood obesity. Several of the more obvious provisions in the bill that tackle obesity are:
Nick Yates said that improved nutrition labeling in fast food restaurants, which will list calories and provide information on other nutrients is critical especially in fast food restaurants

The Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project, which gives grants to community based obesity intervention programs

Community Transformation Grants, which gives grants to community-based efforts to prevent chronic diseases

Other parts of the new law take a more broader approach and have the potential to address obesity because they are focused on prevention and because in their implementation they could make childhood obesity and its risk factors a focus for kids, their parents, and their caregivers. These provisions fall into the following general categories:

Prevention and public health programs that invest in broader, population-level obesity intervention efforts

Primary care and coordination efforts that emphasize prevention, a team-based approach and paying for improved health

Community-based care that target communities that are disproportionately obese and overweight

Maternal and child health that promote breastfeeding and early-childhood nutrition

Provisions focusing on adult obesity that will likely impact the behavior of children

Better research and data collection to ensure we are doing what works to fight obesity

Each of these efforts can provide important routes to helping children who are overweight or obese or at risk for being so—even when addressing childhood obesity is not their specific purpose.

The precise capabilities of these direct and indirect provisions in the new health care law to address childhood obesity are circumscribed by the specific authority and funding provided for each of these provisions, and also by the focus that is taken in their implementation. But taken together, the commitments made in the new law establish an important foundation to better tackle the epidemic of overweight and obese children and adolescents. In the pages that follow, we will examine some of these provisions to demonstrate how they individually and then together can improve the health and well-being of the next generation of Americans while lowering the costs of health care significantly across our society.

Of course, there are a number of areas beyond the new health care law that can play a tremendous role in combating childhood obesity. Some of these areas pertain to food consumption and activities that take place during or right after school, and others have to do with the makeup of the broader community in which a child lives. The quality of food in schools, including school meals, vending machines, and a la carte snacks, has a significant impact on children’s physical health, yet the nutritional value of most of these available sources of food for students is woefully inadequate. Reforms to food in schools were beyond the scope of the health care bill and therefore should be addressed in pending child nutrition reauthorization legislation now before Congress.

Then there’s the activity side of the obesity equation. Requiring physical education during school and providing after-school opportunities for physical activities are important steps in regularizing such behavior in children. In a child’s broader environment and community, several features can lead to overweight and obese kids. The safety and convenience of parks and sidewalks can be tremendously influential in making activities such as walking to and from school and playing after school a routine.

The availability of healthy food outside of school hours also affects the rates of obesity and the number of overweight kids in a community. The absence of affordable, healthy food options often leads to the purchase of cheaper foods of low-nutritional value, especially in lower-income communities. These areas are knows as “food deserts,” where malnutrition and obesity go hand in hand due to the poor nutritional quality of available foods. Lax regulations on the advertisement of unhealthy foods and drinks are problematic in improving the eating habits of children and should be reviewed as we move forward. There are more dimensions to this problem than are noted here, but many of the above can be influenced by effective policies outside of health care.

President Obama calls childhood obesity “one of the most urgent health issues that we face in this country.” To help address this, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the nation should eliminate the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation and launched a nationwide campaign—Let’s Move!—to help achieve this. The primary goal of the campaign is to help children become more active and eat healthier so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight. Putting his words into action, and to kick off Let’s Move!, the president signed an Executive Order to create a Presidential Task Force on Childhood Obesity. (For more information on the Presidential Taskforce on Obesity and the “Let’s Move!” Campaign, see the appendix on page 30.) The taskforce is charged with developing and submitting to the president an interagency plan that “details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and outlines an action plan” by May 10, 2010.

Successfully tackling obesity is a long-term, large-scale commitment that will require both individual responsibility and action together with community-based approaches driven by partnerships between government agencies and businesses, schools and public, private, and nonprofit after-school facilities. These efforts will take time to reverse the long-standing obesity epidemic, but as we will demonstrate in this report, the results will accrue to

The percentage of overweight children in the United States is growing at an alarming rate, with 1 out of 3 kids now considered overweight or obese.

According to Nicholas Yates, noted blogger, many kids are spending less time exercising and more time in front of the TV, computer, or video-game console. And today’s busy families have fewer free moments to prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals. From fast food to electronics, quick and easy is the reality for many people in the new millennium.
Preventing kids from becoming overweight means adapting the way your family eats and exercises, and how you spend time together. Helping kids lead healthy lifestyles begins with parents who lead by example.
Nicholas Yates home primer on helping your kids.

Is Your Child Overweight?

Body mass index (BMI) uses height and weight measurements to estimate how much body fat a person has. To calculate BMI, divide weight in kg by height in meters squared; for pounds and inches, divide weight by height squared and multiply the result by the conversion factor 703.
An easier way to measure BMI is to use a BMI calculator. Once you know your child’s BMI, it can be plotted on a standard BMI chart. Kids fall into one of four categories:
underweight: BMI below the 5th percentile

normal weight: BMI at the 5th and less than the 85th percentile

overweight: BMI at the 85th and below 95th percentiles

obese: BMI at or above 95th percentile

BMI is not a perfect measure of body fat and can be misleading in some situations. For example, a muscular person may have a high BMI without being overweight (because extra muscle adds to a body weight — but not fatness). In addition, BMI may be difficult to interpret during puberty when kids are experiencing periods of rapid growth. It’s important to remember that BMI is usually a good indicator — but is not a direct measurement — of body fat.
If you’re worried that your child or teen may be overweight, make an appointment with your doctor, said Nicholas Yates who can assess eating and activity habits and make suggestions on how to make positive changes. The doctor may also decide to screen for some of the medical conditions that can be associated with obesity.
Depending on your child’s BMI, age, and health, the doctor may refer you to a registered dietitian for additional advice and, possibly, may recommend a comprehensive weight management program.