With more emphasis on stopping childhood obesity, some day cares are making changes in their menus. This article shows how a day care center in Delaware is serving grilled chicken instead of hot dogs, strawberries instead of cookies, and water and low-fat milk instead of fruit juice. The goal is to teach kids early that being active and eating healthy can be the norm and that junk food should be a rare treat.

Do you think changes like these will help reduce childhood obesity?

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Childhood obesity was front and center on Day 2 of the CDC’s conference on obesity prevention and control, The Weight of the Nation. HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, spoke at today’s meeting and said a national focus on childhood obesity is overdue.

“If there was an epidemic of little kids getting cancer, it would be a national crisis,” she said. “But because it’s obesity and the damage doesn’t come until later in life, we’ve been slow to act.”

To help reverse the obesity trend for children and adults, Sebelius says the government wants to help people eat healthy food by serving it in places like public schools, child care centers, recreation centers, senior centers, and other government buildings.

“This isn’t rocket science,” Sebelius explained. “People want to eat healthy diets, but they tend to eat whatever’s convenient and affordable.  If we want to reduce obesity, we need to make eating fruits and vegetables convenient and affordable for all Americans.”

There’s much more of what Sebelius had to say here.

What do you think? Do we need the government to help reverse the obesity epidemic, or should the government stay out of it?

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The USDA will have the power to regulate all food sold in schools – including vending machine snacks – when Congress renews programs for child nutrition. Senate Agriculture Committee chairman, Tom Harkin says this will ensure nutrition programs are not “undermined” by junk food in vending machines. Earlier this year, Harkin co-sponsored a bill that focuses on setting nutritional standards for food in school vending machines and stores to help fight childhood obesity rates.

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Last week, we showed you the latest about childhood obesity rates (they’re way up) and shared with you how experts say you should talk to your kids about diet, exercise, and their weight. Now, there’s another tool that can help your kids grow up healthy (and a super cute giveaway!!).

Gerber’s Start Healthy, Stay Healthy campaign wants to help you get your kids to eat better from birth to preschool. It features nutritional information based on the latest research, including great tips and tools to get you started.

And there’s a cool part where you can create a pledge to your kids. Tell them what’s in your heart, share a photo, even add music if you want.

Create your Start Healthy, Stay Healthy pledge here… then come back and share it with us in the comments. That’s all it takes to enter the drawing to win a diaper bag filled with a recipe tin and teddy bear, compliments of Gerber!

The Recipe Tin comes with these seven recipes: Peach Bars, Corn Bread, Apricot Marinade, Carrot Applesauce Cake, Peach Sorbet, Sippy Cup Smoothie, and Toddler Pot Pie. Plus there are additional recipe cards so you can add your own.

A few contest details – it runs through midnight EST this Friday, February 27, you have to have a U.S. mailing address to enter… and a random number generator will pick the winners.

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I don’t see this happening anytime soon, but… A new study finds banning fast-food advertising on TV in the U.S. could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent. But the report’s authors at the National Bureau of Economic Research question whether it would be practical to make this happen – so far, only Sweden, Norway and Finland have done this. To give you an idea of just how many unhealthy ads kids see, check out this report on advertisements for unhealthy foods during children’s programming.

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Question: How do you get 10,000 kindergartners to find out how fun exercise can be? Answer: Give each one of them a free jump rope, of course! That’s one way the non-profit Seattle group, Treeswing is fighting childhood obesity. With its new Jump Up! program, the goal is to get those 10,000 jump ropes into the hands of every kindergartner in the city this fall.

Treeswing is all about reversing childhood obesity and bringing back the healthy habits of yesteryear. The name refers to “‘the good old days’ when children soared on the tree swing in the backyard or biked to a neighbor’s to play.” Executive director, Tracy Bennett tells FatFighterTV how we can have those good old days once again and how Treeswing is Making a Healthy Difference.

Man-Made Mess
“We created this situation. We have created an environment for this generation of children that is heavily focused on fast food, on video games, and screen time. Kids don’t ride their bikes to school any longer. Families don’t sit down to dinner together any longer. The result is a generation of kids that are increasingly overweight. It’s up to us – those of us who have gotten us to this point over the last 25-30 years – to do something about it.”

Sad Stats
“This generation of kids will be the first to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That hit me like a ton of bricks.”

Fight Obesity Like We Tackled Tobacco
“For quite awhile, the effort where tobacco was concerned was focused on the individual -˜Well, you just need to quit smoking.’ And it wasn’t until the other 75% of the population said, ‘Wait a minute. We’re going to make it harder for you. We’re going to restrict advertising on television, and we’re going to come down on the sale of cigarettes to minors, and we’re not going to let you smoke in public areas.’ That was when you began to see things happen.

And I think that’s very similar here. We can no longer look at people or children who are overweight and say, ‘Gee, they should do something about it.’ We need to change the environment in which they’re making choices.”

It Can Be Done
“We’re beginning to see those dents – whether it’s getting soda machines out of schools or nutritional labeling in restaurants. But we’ve got a long way to go, no question about it.”

Why Jump Ropes?
“To impress upon kids at a very early age – five and six years old – as they enter school and they enter kindergarten, that it’s very important to be physically active every day in some fashion. Jump roping, in particular for that age, is a very easy thing to do – you can do it inside, outside, with a friend, by yourself, sing songs with it, you don’t need special equipment, you don’t have to travel somewhere.”

Getting Through To Parents
“Enclosed with the jump ropes is an education piece aimed at parents that tells them more about the benefits of regular physical activity, and also about the chronic diseases associated with obesity.”

Jump Up! – A Springboard
“I hope at the very least it will make a dent with parents because that is the key to this issue – kids watch their parents and to the extent that parents can model physical activity, that parents can make healthier choices available to their kids – whether that’s on the dinner table or how they spend Saturday afternoon or what they do when they come home from school – that’s where you’re really going to be able to make an impact.”

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Treeswing and its partners will launch the Jump Up! school campaign September 30. The program includes a calendar for kids to track their jumping and prizes to keep them motivated to use their jump ropes. Go here for more information on Treeswing and Jump Up!

Thanks, Treeswing for Making a Healthy Difference.

Check out all of FFTV’s Making a Healthy Difference honorees here.

If you know of someone you think we should profile, we want to hear from you. Just send us an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot]com

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It’s how New York will track obesity levels in some schools – as students start the school year, some of them will have to weigh in first. A new law requires public schools outside of New York City to get students’ weights and body mass indexes as part of an effort to fight childhood obesity.

The information will help health officials to evaluate obesity levels based on where the kids live. The data will be confidential and gathered as students start second, fourth, seventh and 10th grades.

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Food for thought: What do they put in a Twinkie that prevents it from breaking down in a garbage dump? That’s a question I saw in Tosca Reno’s new book, The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids. It really gets you thinking about the dangers of food additives and preservatives. As I read it, I just knew I had to share Tosca’s passionate message of Clean Eating with you.

The book is filled with information on how to make the transition to Eating Clean, how to do it on a budget, and oh yes – it has lots of family-friendly recipes, including this one for Protein Smoothie Popsicles.

When I spoke with Tosca, she told me she wrote this book out of fear – fear of how the obesity epidemic is hurting our health and the toll it has taken on our children. Here’s more from Tosca and how she and The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids are Making a Healthy Difference.

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The Fear Factor
“I see young people who are becoming sicker at earlier ages, and that’s what frightens me. Because I think, they don’t know and parents don’t know anymore what the right thing is to eat. That’s the main motivator behind me writing this book is somebody has to say something; somebody has to do something. Kids should not be walking around overweight.”

The Journey to Junk
“We got to this point because I think parents traded away our own power of making food choices. We let these big companies make decisions for us and let their messages tell us what the good choices are. We trusted them and we believed them and I think we’ve been mislead. Our parents didn’t eat this way. And their parents before them ate very close to the earth. They didn’t have a bowl of Fruit Loops that came from some food company that engineered that food in their laboratory. There’s something terribly wrong. And we need to make changes.”

So Many Questions…
“I didn’t use to question food like I do now. When I was a young mother in my 20’s and 30’s I just went to the grocery store – I bought things, I didn’t question it. The packaged stuff looks pretty exciting when you’re a new mom. And I have learned to steer clear of that. Honestly, I believe a lot of this trouble we’re having with obesity and diabetes is because we’re eating too much of these overly processed foods.”

Who Has Time for This Eating Clean Stuff?
“I always say this, ‘It takes effort to get yourself in the car – even to get dressed to get in the car – go to McDonald’s, go to the drive-thru, order the food, and wait in line.’ You could save all that time and have your own series of fast food choices in your kitchen yourself. There are so many foods that don’t take much preparation time at all that are so much better for you. It’s a question of wanting to do it and knowing how. I hope the book is a combination of both.”

Chemical Soup for Breakfast?
“We don’t realize when we’re pouring some heavily processed food into our cereal bowl, we’re not just pouring Fruit Loops – we’re pouring junk. And with so many of these overly processed foods, you’re also getting what I like to call toxins or chemicals because foods are chemically charged – they’re engineered to sit on the shelf for weeks and weeks, months at a time sometimes. There are a lot of words we can’t pronounce that are lurking in our foods that we really have no business eating. That’s why I call it chemical soup.”

Family Favorites Made Clean (and yes, kids will eat ‘em!)
“My family was kind of my test kitchen. I wanted to keep the family favorites and the kid favorites in place. Chicken nuggets are on everyone’s table.” (Other recipes include Healthy Mac and Cheese, PB & J All Cleaned Up, and Birthday Cupcakes)

Eating Green, Too
“Clean Eating is Green Eating because the closer you eat to the earth, the less packaging there is, and the better that is not only for our environment, but for ourselves.”

Inspiration: What Tosca Wants You to Get Out of This Book
“You might not be able to adopt every single principle but one. One idea. Just make one change for the health of you and your family. That’s what I hope to get. And if I can convince one person to do that then my job is done. If I can convince many, then we’re really going places. But I just want people to see – don’t trust that everything in the grocery store is healthy food even when the labels says healthy.”

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FFTV is giving away 3 copies of The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids. Go here for all the details.

And go to this site for more information on The Eat-Clean Diet

Thanks, Tosca and The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids for Making a Healthy Difference.

Check out all of FFTV’s Making a Healthy Difference honorees here.

If you know of someone you think we should profile, we want to hear from you. Just send us an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot]com

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That’s right. Exercise is just what your kids need to do well in school, according to more and more research.

One study – presented at a recent American College of Sports Medicine meeting – shows the fittest group of students scored nearly 30 percent higher on standardized tests than the least fit group. And the least fit students had grades in four core classes that were 13 to 20 percent lower than all other kids.

Experts say exercise may boost academic performance in several ways that include: burning off pent-up energy and allowing kids to pay attention better; boosting self-esteem and mood; and increasing blood flow to the brain, which helps with memory and concentration.

So, not only will physical activity help stem the childhood obesity epidemic, it’ll also help kids’ education. Yay for exercise!

You can see more on the link between exercise and education here.

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Now playing in a city near you… (*cue movie announcer*) They’re angry about the junk food in our schools. Angry at how it’s affecting childhood obesity and other health issues. And angry enough to do something about it.

Two Angry Moms…starring…

Amy Kalafa: award-winning filmmaker, holistic health and nutrition counselor, mother

Dr. Susan Rubin: founder of Better School Food, holistic nutritionist, mother

Get a sneak peek below – watch clips from the documentary, Two Angry Moms, and see how it’s Making a Healthy Difference. Here’s what the film’s producer, Amy Kalafa, tells FFTV about the movie, her anger, and how you can join the fight for kids’ health.

What made Amy angry
“I was angry that my efforts were being undermined by what was being served in the school cafeteria. And when I met other moms who felt the same way, they were called ‘Food Police’ and ‘Nutrition Nazis’ rather than being welcomed with open arms, saying, ‘How do we do this?’ That is still going on now. If you try to feed kids better, you get labeled as a spoiled sport.”

Why she’s concerned
“There’s a childhood obesity crisis in this country. For the first time, kids will live shorter lives than their parents. And obesity is the tip of the iceberg. Maybe what’s great in a sort of weird, twisted way is that we can see it, because then we actually notice it and want to do something about it.”

Too much blame on parents?
“Parents are getting blamed for all the bad eating habits of kids and yet, they’re like the second or third generation that’s grown up in this food culture, so they don’t know any better.

It’s not that there’s too much blame put on parents; it’s that there aren’t enough tools for parents to make changes and there’s not enough support for parents. There are parents who don’t care and parents who do care. It shouldn’t be entirely up to the parents. The schools shouldn’t be complicit in doing harm to kids. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.”

What to do?
“I thought, somehow this information needs to be packaged so that parents can understand it and be able to make wise choices for their kids. I decided somebody should make a movie and that somebody should be me. I focused on school food just because I could reach the most people the most efficiently.

I see parents as advocates for their kids. If they go to the school and say, ‘We’re not happy with what you’re feeding them,’ that’s how they can create change.”

See a preview of Two Angry Moms

Familiar frustration
“When I started making the film I thought, I’ll just go find a mom like me who knows how to fix this, because I didn’t. I started interviewing moms who had tried to make a change in communities near mine and they all started telling me the same story -  ‘I signed up for my school food committee, I volunteered my time, I went to meetings, I offered suggestions. We all felt like something was going to happen, and at the end of the year, everything stayed the same. We all dropped off the committee and decided it was a waste of time. And what do we do now?’”

The other angry mom
“That’s what started getting me angry. I thought there’s got to be somebody who knows how to do this. Then I was introduced to Dr. Susan Rubin. She just happened to be the one tenacious mom who had been fighting that fight for ten years in her community and still had gotten nowhere. But she kept at it and her organization was starting to have an impact. So I followed her and Better School Food over the course of a school year and step by step saw how they were able to help one school district implement change. They went really far. The film kind of models that transformation and the conflict in the community and the misunderstanding, and then eventually – the success.”

Uphill battle

“I’m a parent who does the right job at home and my kids will still eat all the junk that’s being sold in the school. I went to the school thinking, I’m just going to show how the system works, and there I go finding my daughter is eating Pop-Tarts and Rice Krispies Treats. Yeah, if you offer it to her, she’ll eat it. It’s kind of like saying, ‘Maybe they should have a cigarette machine in the high school cafeteria because at age 16 it’s legal to smoke.’”

Change is possible
“What the film tries to show is that schools can actually be part of the solution. And instead of going around showing what was wrong, I made a movie that showed the schools that were doing a really great job and the parents who were advocating so that their schools would make those changes.

When I started doing the film I was looking for models and there weren’t a lot. It was really hard to find good programs. In the wake of the film, there have been many success stories.”

Not a Nutrition Nazi
“I love pizza. I love sweets. My kids do, too. The schools, at the bare minimum, should not offer foods that we know promote obesity and not offer foods that are laden with chemicals and preservatives. You want to serve pizza? How about serving pizza made with fresh, healthy ingredients?”

See the movie, join the movement
“I’m encouraging people to sign up to host a screening. If you watch it in a community group – even if it’s a small group like a house party of 10-12 people – you’re going to gather the neighbors together, you’re going to have a great conversation afterward, and you’re going to say, ‘What can we do as the next step?’”

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In the past nine months, there have been about 60 movie screenings across the country. To find out how you can host a screening or if there’s already one scheduled near you, visit Two Angry Moms.

Thanks, Two Angry Moms, for Making a Healthy Difference!

Check out all of FFTV’s Making a Healthy Difference honorees here.

If you know of someone you think we should profile, we want to hear from you. Just send us an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot]com

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