Earlier this week the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced that it would be spending $500 million dollars over the next five years to lead a national campaign against childhood obesity. The foundation likened this new campaign to work it has done previously to address tobacco use.

The foundation’s press release describes the childhood obesity epidemic and its costs in stark terms:

During the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all age groups, more than quadrupling among children ages 6 to 11. Today, more than 33 percent of children and adolescents—approximately 25 million kids—are overweight or obese.

Preventing obesity during childhood is critical, because habits that last into adulthood frequently are formed during youth. Research shows that overweight adolescents have up to an 80 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults. Earlier onset of obesity leads to the earlier onset of related illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer.

In addition to the toll on our nation’s health, obesity also poses a tremendous financial threat to our economy and our health care system. It’s estimated that the obesity epidemic costs our nation $117 billion per year in direct health care costs and lost productivity. Childhood obesity alone carries a huge price tag-up to $14 billion per year in direct health care costs to treat kids.

The foundation wants to reverse this epidemic by 2015, and promoting physical activity will be one part of the solution. I liked this quote from the foundation’s president, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, which gets at one of the causes of the obesity epidemic: “Physical activity has really just been engineered out of our life” (from an NPR interview).

Let’s start engineering physical activity back into our lives and into our communities. Keep on the lookout for upcoming Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grants that can be used to address obesity in your community.

It was a grueling weekend. On Friday morning our almost-three-year-old daughter said she felt sick and couldn’t go to day care. I thought this was one of her attempts to stay home, but when she vomited, my doubts about her being sick vanished. Read the rest of this entry »

On March 7 the Star Tribune published a good article by reporter Laurie Blake entitled “Movement grows to get us out of our cars.” Here are the opening paragraphs

With hundreds of miles of off-road trails, Minnesota is already a national leader in recreational biking and walking. But that is no longer enough.

Concerned about obesity and worried about higher gasoline prices and global warming, people are pushing for more day-to-day walking and biking options.

Community workshops on strategies for making it safer and more inviting to walk or bike are drawing some of the largest crowds in the country. A few developments friendly to walking and biking have been built in the past five years.

Now two new programs will aim millions of dollars at getting Twin Cities residents out of their cars. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning Melanie Reid, who works at the Just Food Northfield Community Co-op, and I met with the director of the preschool that her son and my daughter attend. We wanted to share our concerns about snacks at the school and their nutritional value. We’re both concerned that the snack menu includes Pop-Tarts, donut holes, cheese puffs, and other unhealthy foods.

I shared some information that I’d gathered: a list of alternative snacks that I made, some printouts on healthy snacks from the Mayo Clinic and KidsHealth, and another printout from Allina Clinics, a local healthcare provider, about “fighting childhood obesity.” I read aloud some of the following information from the latter: Read the rest of this entry »