Childhood Obesity Epidemic

It's 5-2-1-0, and it breaks down like this:

5 -- as in eat five fruits and vegetables a day.

2 -- as in limit screen time -- TV in particular -- to 2 hours or less a day. (The AAP says to avoid any screen time for children under the age of 2.)

1 -- as in do one hour of physical activity a day.

0 -- as in have zero sugar-sweetened drinks -- or at least make sugary drinks a special treat and not a veritable birthright.

Please view the references I linked above. Dr. Mercola also has a wonderful video posted by a British Cheif, Jamie Oliver. He offers solutions starting with our school lunches for children, cooking at home, parents modeling healthy behaviors, and changing our food choices for our family. 

The following two articles speak to solutions for our children.

Schools with Healthier Lunches Reap Major Benefits (Dr. Mercola)

Altering school lunches CAN help diminish illness and increase learning. In one Swedish study, when they eliminated all sweet buns, sweet drinks, and candy from school premises, they saw a 6 percent drop in obesity in four years.

Behavioral problems have also been remedied by giving kids healthier lunches at school.

For instance, in 1997 one Wisconsin high school instituted a healthy lunch program. No longer were the cafeterias filled with fast-food nachos and French fries; instead they were filled with fresh salads, meats, whole-grain bread and fruit. At the same time, vending machines were removed and good drinking water added.

The program is based on work done some 30 years ago by Dr. Feingold. He recommended that eliminating synthetic colors, synthetic flavors, and the preservatives BHA, BHT, and TBHQ would be beneficial to health, learning and behavior problems in children. However, his findings were not accepted by most medical professionals at that time.

When the healthier diet had been in effect for close to five years, the school showed amazing results. In annual state reports, the school's incidence of dropouts, expulsion, drug use, weapons and suicide was zero. On top of this, reports said that grades improved. This from a school that previously reported having discipline problems and students carrying weapons.

Another issue, TV commercials. A recent study was published on the relation of obesity to commercial television viewing.

According to the authors, the findings strongly suggest that steering children away from commercial television may be effective in reducing childhood obesity, given that food is the most commonly advertised product on children's television and the fact that almost 90 percent of children begin watching television regularly before the age of 2.

By the time they are 5 years old, children have seen an average of more than 4,000 television commercials for food annually. During Saturday morning cartoons, children see an average of one food ad every five minutes. The vast majority of these ads -- up to 95 percent -- are for foods with poor nutritional value, the researchers say. (Science Daily)

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