Karah S's List: more specific obesity research

• For years our nation has been struggling with an epidemic of childhood obesity.
• one in three children in this country are either overweight or obese,
• one in three kids will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lives.
• spending almost $150 billion every year to treat obesity-related conditions.
• solving the problem of childhood obesity in a generation, so kids born today can reach adulthood at a healthy weight.
• "Let's Move!" is helping parents get the tools they need to keep their families healthy and fit. It's helping grocery stores serve communities that don't have access to fresh foods. And it's finding new ways to help America's children stay physically active.
• fundamental change to schools and improve the food options available to our children.
• -to get the nutritious meals they need to do their best. It will set higher nutritional standards for school meals by requiring more fruits, vegetables and whole grains while reducing fat and salt.
• help eliminate junk food from vending machines and a la carte lines
• We owe it to the children who aren't reaching their potential because they're not getting the nutrition they need during the day.
• We owe it to the parents who are working to keep their families healthy and looking for a little support along the way.

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• Substitute "tobacco" for "junk food." That provides a pretty clear road map about what government authorities should be doing to safeguard public health.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture basically say Americans need to ease up on the salt, sugar and saturated fat, and instead eat more fruits and veggies.
• more than two-thirds of adults over 20 are either overweight or obese,
• "It's not that we're morons and have no idea what's good for us," said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, a nonprofit organization. "It's the world around us. We're influenced to eat by our environment."
• "If we really want to solve this national public health challenge, we must focus on educating Americans through comprehensive approaches that include nutrition education based in fact and focusing on total diet and exercise,"
• measures to reduce consumption of what's bad for us, and aggressive campaigns to get us to eat and behave in a more healthful fashion.
• We need to change social norms to make certain foods less appealing

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  We're already removing sugary sodas and junk food from schools, and we're doing it to help kids be healthier. Surely the same rationale applies to the rest of society.

• I'm not saying we close down all McDonald's and Burger King outlets. I'm saying we significantly limit advertising and sponsorship by companies selling, as Goldstein put it, high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar products.

   

• This has worked for tobacco. It's worked (on a largely volunteer basis) for alcohol. It can work for junk food.

   
• good place to start would be government buildings--eliminate all bad-for-you foods and beverages. Instead, make healthful alternatives available. Gradually, if the political will can be found, expand the junk food ban to all workplaces, just as smoking bans spread from the public to the private sector.

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  Meanwhile, we need to step up wellness efforts to get people to make more healthful choices and exercise more. These programs should be funded by levies on the foods that contribute most to obesity, and the obvious place to start is soda.

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• calorie labels do increase awareness of calories, they do not necessarily influence food choices or the number of calories consumed.
• low-income neighborhoods because they tend to be of more fragile health and at higher risk for obesity, and they tend to be surrounded by higher concentrations of fast-food restaurants without other, more healthful food options.
• choosing based on availability and price of food," not necessarily nutritional value,
• "What we're starting to see is that (labeling) won't be enough to influence obesity by itself in a large-scale way," he says. "One of the best things for restaurant owners to do is to reformulate their menus."

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•    Huge Truth #1: We rely on the wrong food

•    Huge Truth #2: We eat too much
• Huge Truth #3: We don't diet right
• Huge Truth #4: We drink too many calories
• We don't exercise enough
• Seventy-five percent of teens who are overweight or obese will become obese adults
• "Now, you have those medical problems earlier. We expect to see more heart attacks and strokes in younger adults."

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• Rich people were fat. Poor people were thin.

• Today, the polar opposite is true. Numerous studies show that low-income children and adults are far more likely to be overweight than those of greater means. And the statistical distribution fits a nice, neat curve – as income falls, the rate of obesity rises.

   
• Poor people are uneducated and ignorant about nutrition. (They never learned that Doritos and Twinkies are not a healthy meal).
• • Poor people are too lazy (or too busy working) to cook real food.
   
• Poor people are too tired after working two jobs to get enough exercise.
• • Poor people don’t have access to fitness centers and farmers markets.
   
   
• What he found is that he could buy well over 1,000 calories of cookies or potato chips. But his dollar would only buy 250 calories of carrots. He could buy almost 900 calories of soda… but only 170 calories of orange juice.

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• abetes),   particularly if a close family member   is affected with diabetes. Therefore,   it becomes very important to maintain   a healthy body weight throughout   your life in order to protect yourself   from developing a chronic disease   like diabetes.
• Doctors and researchers   have found that obesity and diabetes   are connected. Persons who are obese   are at high risk for developing   Type 2 diabetes (also known as "insulin-resistant"   or "adult-onset"
• we have   come to understand that a person's   genetic make-up can result in a   predisposition to becoming obese.
• The

  environment   plays a much larger role in a person's   likelihood of becoming obese than   does any specific gene.
• The   two main factors that can cause   obesity are a diet high in fat and   a lack of exercise.
• The disease we   typically call "diabetes"   is known as Diabetes Mellitus.
• Diabetes Mellitus is   a disease of high blood sugar. It   is dangerous, even fatal, to have   too much or too little sugar in   the blood. The level of sugar in   a person's blood is very important   in maintaining day-to-day and even   minute-to-minute health, and one   of the body's major functions is   to control blood sugar at proper   levels. Controlling blood sugar   involves the liver, pancreas, kidneys,   and fat. It's the pancreas that   lowers blood sugar by producing   a hormone known as insulin. Insulin   removes sugar from the blood and   forces it into cells, where it is   used to make energy for the body.
• two factors need to   be present. First, you need to inherit   a predisposition to the disease,   and second the environment must   trigger a response in your body.   Your genes alone are not enough.

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• Addressing that problem requires changing what kids eat in school, where many kids consume half of their daily calories.
• By setting standards for the food that is served and sold in cafeterias, we can make sure our children have the opportunity for a healthy start in life.
• stocking them with more nutritious offerings to make healthy choices available to st
• We won't succeed if our school environments and our students aren't healthy.

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• life expectancy for the average American  could decline by as much as 5 years unless aggressive efforts are  made to slow rising rates of obesity,
• The U.S. could be facing its first sustained drop in life expectancy  in the modern era

• Americans are some of the unhealthiest people in the world
• Even though we are living in a country with great economic power and technological advancement, we are also living in a country with the smallest fund of practical nutritional knowledge. We are living in a land plagued with obesity.
• obesity in adults has increased by 60% within the past twenty years and obesity in children has tripled in the past thirty years. A staggering 33% of American adults are obese and obesity-related deaths have climbed to more than 300,000 a year, second only to tobacco-related deaths.
• examine the American diet and lifestyle. Living a life on the go, eating fast-food and microwave dinners, the health of the American people has been sacrificed. Instead of eating a diet of pure, wholesome foods coming directly from the land, Americans eat a diet of packaged, processed, and refined foods.
• produce food in mass quantities, make it last longer and taste better.
• They are comprised mostly of saturated fats and highly refined carbohydrates and are loaded with sodium and sugar.
• The average adult shouldn't have more than 65 grams of fat or 2000 calories a day. One meal from Burger King, a hamburger and French fries, has 50 grams of fat and 2000 calories, which is almost enough to fill someone's fat and calorie quota for the day!
• The average child sees more than 10,000 food ads on TV each year, most for high-calorie, high-fat, and high-sugar meals. Not only does the fast food industry spend billions per year on marketing, but they have also infiltrated our schools, signing contracts with them. Our children are bombarded from every angle with these toxic foods making it virtually impossible for them to eat anything else. It is no wonder that we have an increasingly obese population of children
• Americans have re-defined the word food. In the Webster's dictionary food is any nourishing substance eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc. In American society food is that which is fatty, tasty, processed, refined and contains no nutrients; a substance detrimental to the body's functions, creating disease, and resulting in death
• At no time in history have humans eaten such refined, processed and fatty food and at no time in history have humans had such an obesity epidemic.
• our ancestors' ancestors ate a diet coming directly from the land. In those days obesity wasn't even a word.
• • use in when talking about how our society needs to change its norms..
• . It is not easy to go against the strong current of an unhealthy society but it is a necessity.

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• Only 30% of the children have physical training in elementary school, while only 20% have extracurricular exercising program. Of course, exercises alone can’t do too much in their fight against obesity; they must be sustained with a healthy diet that excludes junk food, sweets, fats and foods rich in cholesterol, eating on the rush and so on.
• Even if American obesity statistics are not very optimistic for the future, things can still be changed as soon as people understand that being obese is not only a problem for self-image and self-esteem, is also a health-related issue. Obesity affects the heart and the blood pressure, the joints and the lungs, as the weight puts a great pressure on them.

• There are three main programs that fight against obesity and develop continuous campaigns to make people aware of the risks it involves. We Can!
• Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition) is a national wide program created to offer an alternative for parents and even entire communities to help their children (aged 8 to 13) to pass over obesity and keep fit. They offer materials, training sessions and conferences to promote a healthy lifestyle, which combines an equilibrated diet with exercises and outdoor activities for children. The program is coordinated by the Department of Health and Human Services and collaborates with other four institutes: the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Cancer Institute.
• second program is coordinated by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and focuses on the reversal of the obesity phenomenon by 2015. They’re hoping to succeed by increasing the opportunities for children to get physical exercises in schools and their communities, by implementing childhood obesity school programs and by facilitating the access to affordable, healthier food for their families.
• third important initiative of programs for childhood obesity belongs to the Center for Child Obesity that has put in function a program called Shapedown, which is meant to improve the wealth management in children and adolescents. It has different levels, depending on the age and everyone can order the materials and start right away improving their lives.

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