Renowned Professor Tags Obesity As Biggest Health Threat

“Ask world renowned public health professor Mariano Giacchi about the gravest problem facing societies worldwide and his answer may come as a surprise. It’s obesity. Not AIDS, malaria or avian bird flu — obesity. ’We are not talking about just the personal, physical level, but about the socio-economic and societal level all around the world, not just the west,’ Giacchi said during an interview in Dover Monday morning. ‘Obesity is the main epidemiological issue around the world. This is particularly true for children.’ Giacchi — professor of biology and director of the Public Health program at the roughly 750-year-old University of Siena in Tuscany, Italy — spent Sunday night with an old friend, Rose Manes, a former Associate Professor of Health Records Administration at Bridgeport College in Connecticut.”

Nutrition Hint--The Hidden Dangers of the...SNOW CONE!

Nothing says summer refresher like a snow cone, but the trick to this summer shocker is that within a few minutes of ordering this you'll have downed 550 calories -- probably without even realizing it. Our advice: Drink a glass of ice water. Then, if you still want something sweet, try a scoop of a fruit sorbet, which is about 100-150 calories, or frozen yogurt for 180-200 calories (but this one contains some fat, so watch how much you eat). The real deal however, is a popsicle. At 45 calories, you'd have to eat 12 of these to catch up to the calories in a snow cone.

Overcoming Overweight and Obesity in Your Child

The key to keeping kids of all ages at a healthy weight is taking a whole-family approach. It's the "practice what you preach" mentality. Make eating and exercise a family affair. Get your children involved by letting them help you plan and prepare healthy meals, and take them along when you go grocery shopping, so they can learn how to make good food choices.
Avoid falling into some common food/eating behavior traps:
Don't reward children for good behavior or try to stop bad behavior with sweets or treats. Come up with other solutions to modify their behavior.
Don't maintain a clean-plate policy. Be aware of kids' hunger cues. Even babies who turn away from the bottle or breast send signals that they're full. If kids are satisfied, don't force them to continue eating. Reinforce the idea that they should only eat when they're hungry.
Don't talk about "bad foods" or completely eliminate all sweets and favorite snacks from overweight children's diets. Children may rebel and overeat these forbidden foods outside the home or sneak them in on their own.
Here are some additional recommendations for children of all ages:
Birth to age 1: In addition to it's many health benefits, breastfeeding may help prevent excessive weight gain. Though the exact mechanism is not known, breastfed babies are more able to control their own intake and follow their own internal hunger cues.
Ages 2 to 6: Start good habits early. Encourage kids' natural tendency to be active and offer children a variety of healthy foods. It may take 10 or more tries before a child will accept a new food, so don't give up.
Ages 7 to 12: Encourage children to be physically active every day, whether it's an organized sports team or a pick-up game of soccer during recess. Keep your kids active at home, too, through everyday activities like walking and playing in the yard. Let them be more involved in making good food choices.
Ages 13 to 17: Teens like fast-food, but try to steer them toward healthier choices like grilled chicken sandwiches, salads, and smaller sizes. Encourage them to be active everyday. If they are not into organized sports, suggest intramural programs, fitness classes such as yoga or pilates, or alternative sport like skateboarding, inline skating, or mountain biking.
All ages: Cut down on TV, computer, and video game time and discourage eating while watching the tube. Serve a variety of healthy foods and eat meals together as often as possible. Try to include 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day in their diet, plan healthy snacks, and encourage kids to eat breakfast every day. Encourage your children to try a variety of activities. Don't force any one sport or activity - and help them find what they enjoy and then support them in their efforts.
If you, as a parent, eat well and exercise regularly and incorporate healthy habits into your family's daily life, you're modeling a healthy lifestyle for your children that could last into adulthood. Talk to your kids about the importance of eating well and being active, but make it a family affair that will become second nature for both you and your children. Most of all, let your children know you love them - no matter what their weight - and that you want to help your child be happy and healthy.

Childhood Obesity Fueled By Marketing Tactics

Every day our children are bombarded with advertisements -- quite often for products that are harmful to them. Each year, the average child sees about 40,000 commercials on television alone, according to communications professor Dale Kunkel of the University of Arizona; the majority of ads targeted at them are for candy, sugared cereal, soda and fast food.
While parents may actually be the ones paying the price for all of this advertising at the cash register, our children are paying with their health. In addition to the social stigma and psychological effects that overweight children often suffer, they are also significantly more likely than their peers to become afflicted with serious health problems such as asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure and sleep apnea. In fact, the U.S. Surgeon General has identified overweight and obesity as "the fastest growing cause of disease and death in America."
The role of marketing in the childhood obesity problem is significant. A recent Stanford study found that children who spend the most time watching TV, videos and video games are more likely to be overweight. A 1999 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association also shows that exposure to food commercials influences children's food preferences and requests.
The pervasiveness of marketing to children is particularly troubling because of kids' inherent vulnerability to persuasion. Children under age 8 do not recognize the intent of ads and tend to accept them as accurate and unbiased. A 30-second commercial can influence brand preferences in children as young as 2, Kunkel has found.
Many advertisers prey upon children's vulnerability by disguising their advertisements as online games or by using product placement to sneak them into prime-time shows. It is through television, computers and video games that perhaps the most insidious attempts to manipulate children's eating habits occur. It is where food advertisers spend billions of dollars each year pushing unhealthy cereals, snacks and drinks through commercials and product placements aimed at children; where beloved cartoon characters shill for fast- food chains (such as Burger King's use of Teletubbies and SpongeBob); and where advertisements for cookies and candy are disguised as arcade-style games. It is where broadcasters and advertisers put their own financial well-being above the health of our children.
The media and advertisers have a responsibility to do better by our nation's kids. Some have recognized the effects their business practices have on children and are taking important steps toward acting in children's best interest. In January, Kraft Foods decided to stop advertising its low- nutrition foods during children's programs and replace them with ads for more nutritional snack products. Sesame Street recently teamed with Earth's Best to launch a new line of organic and "nutrient-rich" breakfast foods and snacks for children. Nickelodeon refused to allow one of its characters, Dora the Explorer, to be used for a Burger King kids' meal unless a piece of fruit was included in the meal.
These are all important steps toward improving the nutritional messages children receive from the media. Other broadcasters and advertisers need to follow suit and develop business practices that will support, rather than thwart, children's healthy development. For instance, they can dedicate a certain percentage of advertising time to pro-nutrition public-service announcements. And if broadcasters are going to license their characters, these characters can sell healthy foods.
Yet more must be done to protect our nation's children, especially in a rapidly changing technological era. Digital, interactive television is on the horizon, and it promises to change the way companies push their marketing on children. Imagine watching a television show that has logos for McDonald's, Snickers, Jell-o Pudding, and the new "American Pie 6" movie scattered about the bottom of the screen. Imagine that you or your children could click on those logos with your remote control and be instantly transported to Web sites for those products where your child could purchase items from those sites directly from your TV.
Interactive television also has the potential to target individual viewers with personalized ads, increasing the likelihood of impulse purchases, according to the Center for Digital Democracy. Advertisers will be able to target children according to their gender, age, household income and race, by tracking the history of their individual television viewing habits.
The Federal Communications Commission must intervene now to ensure that children are protected from interactive advertising before it ever has a chance to become a common marketing technique. The FCC is currently accepting public comments about interactive advertising in children's programming. We encourage caring adults to contact the FCC by Sunday and let it know that they do not want interactive TV to become advertisers' new frontier for marketing unhealthy foods to children. It is essential that the commission move forward and prohibit this practice to protect our nation's kids.

Heart Disease Starts Early In Life, and Childhood Obesity is a Key Culprit Study Says

“Two of the biggest threats to heart health that trace back to childhood are prehypertension -- blood pressure just below the official high blood pressure reading of 140/90 -- and obesity. Indeed, people in the study with prehypertension had more risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including obesity, high levels of blood fats such as cholesterol, and diabetes. ‘Obesity in childhood is the only consistent factor predicting cardiac enlargement in adults," he said. "It also predicts adult vascular stiffness.’ That is a formal medical term for what most people call hardening of the arteries. ‘These observations give a compelling reason for pursuing preventive, personalized intervention strategies at an early age in order to evaluate obesity and underlying cardiovascular disease risk factors,’ Berenson said in a statement.”

Motivating Your Teen To Move

“If your teen isn't involved in a team sport, it can be a challenge creating opportunities to be physically active. Benefits to exercise include a healthier self-esteem, better grades and improved quality of sleep. Teens who exercise on a regular basis are also less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, smoke cigarettes or miss school. The American Heart Association suggests that teens raise their heart rates for 20 minutes without stopping, three or more times a week. Aerobic exercises like running, skating, cycling or swimming are good options. Sports like hockey, soccer, basketball or tennis are other alternatives.”


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