Fighting Childhood Obesity-Yes We Can

Credit: weblogs.baltimoresun.com

Today, Michelle Obama officially announces her campaign to fight childhood obesity. This is to become her primary policy objective – political pressures not with-standing, we all know this continues (and will continue) to be a major issue in the United States and in other economically developing and developed countries. Overweight and obese children are more likely to grow-up to become overweight and obese adults, with an array of both chronic and acute conditions. In the U.S., the highest rates of obesity are found in the South and Midwestern regions of the country, with well-documented ethnic discrepancies – Blacks and Hispanics have significantly higher rates of obesity in almost all age-groups and regions of the country.

Childhood obesity, in the United States at least, is not just about making sure children exercise enough and have access (and eat) well-balanced diets. A large part of it is about the habits and cultural values which children are socialized to recognize and live by. There are varied regional, ethnic, and generational associations with food and eating habits. Simply changing school lunches, teaching kids about bmi, saving PE classes, and supporting community gardens will not do the trick alone. Changing the habits, rituals, and importance of food and eating is hard…especially in the general, sweeping manner of national policies. Supporting local initiatives and encouraging changes in education and health policies might start to swing the trend (I wrote on these topics several times a couple of years ago).

There is a lot of cultural significance associated with food, and it’s affects on our health (I mentioned Type II diabetes in my previous post, which is one of the chronic conditions associated with being significantly over-weight). This significance is hard for outsiders to quantify and understand, but something that is quantifiable are the socio-economic changes and conditions that countries like the U.S. have gone through in the last 50 years. Social, political, and economic structures affect individual access to and ability to purchase nutrient-high, lower calorie foods; time, knowledge, and ability for regular exercise; and access to high-quality, appropriate, health care.

Mrs. Obama has chosen a significant and admirable challenge – for our nation’s health and well-being, tackling childhood obesity (and some of the structures that have led to it) needs to happen before another generation moves into adulthood to face a myriad of health concerns.

*Check-out the University of Oxford’s Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity for more on ALL the different facets of populations and obesity.

*Image originally from a post at weblogs.baltimoresun.com