Are American children fit enough to climb the food pyramid?

If the alarming increase of obesity in American children has not impacted you, take a look at these statistics :

• One out of every seven low income children in America is obese.
• More than 70% of the obese youth are at higher risk of heart diseases.
• Hospital costs for children were 35 million in the 1980s and these have increased to 127 million today.
• Type 2 diabetes has reached to the levels of 8-9 %; a two-fold increase from the early 1980s.

Why is this? Does the media have any blame in the obesity increase in our youth?

A study, The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity, funded by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, focused on the relationship between children and the time they spend using media.  A prime reason for obesity in children is their malnourished eating habits – processed foods – desired by most American households due to target marketing and advertising (a child is exposed to about 40,000 ads per year on TV alone). Another contributing reason to obesity in children is that previous generations used to spend their extra time playing outside with kids in the neighborhood, but now video games, watching television and online chatting are more popular. Although these activities can do wonders for the imagination and intellect (as long as you are watching Discovery and not the Real Housewives), they are sedentary.  The study states that children spend an average of 5.5 hours a day using media, and found an obesity increase of 2% for every additional hour of television viewed.  Even if children say no to sweets and sodas, low physical activity can cause health problems down the road.

S.O.S… anyone?

Several groups have set up campaigns attempting to spread motivation and amp up the physical and nutritional value in the lives of our youngest generation. Here are just a few of these trailblazers:   

• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched the “VERB™ It’s what you do” campaign. It was a national, multicultural, social marketing campaign coordinated Social marketing campaigns apply commercial marketing strategies to increase and maintain physical activity among the tweens,  ages 9-13.
• Nickelodeon branded the “Let’s Just Play” campaign. Their hope was to mesh the media message with  real, physical activities to get kids more active after watching the shows on their network.
• In 2010, the FCC joined the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity and released a report to the President, entitled "Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation." The Commission worked closely with the FTC, the FDA and HHS in the food marketing section of the report. Let's Move! is a program developed by First Lady Michelle Obama to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation.

Show your support for this cause by reading up on these references and helping our youth. Feel free to share any ideas or links to other wonderful organizations promoting health!