White House Launches Campaign to Fight Childhood Obesity
Calling it one of the most urgent health issues facing the nation, the White House has initiated efforts to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation. President Barack Obama (D) has signed a Presidential Memorandum which creates a Task Force on Childhood Obesity that includes Cabinet members and is charged with developing within 90 days a “comprehensive interagency plan” that “builds on
effective strategies, engages families and communities, and mobilizes both public and private sector resources.”
The Obama administration will also reportedly ask Congress to improve childhood nutrition by banning sugary snacks and drinks from school vending machines and requiring schools to offer healthier alternatives. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told a news source that the administration will seek the changes when the Childhood Nutrition Act is overhauled later this year. See The Associated Press, February 8,
2010.
First lady Michelle Obama will also take up the matter and has launched a “Let’s Move” campaign to revamp the ways American children eat and play. The initiative will focus on providing support to parents, getting healthier foods into the nation’s schools, increasing children’s activity levels, and improving access across the country to healthy, affordable foods. While New York University Professor Marion Nestle applauded the new campaign, she questioned its failure to include efforts to address youth food marketing, when “food commercials are ubiquitous in kids’ lives.” She cited two recent studies that looked at the purported correlation between childhood obesity and watching TV food commercials and movies that prominently feature name-brand foods.
In one study, University of California-Los Angeles researchers analyzed the TV shows that children watched and their body mass indices. Frederick Zimmerman & Janice Bell, “Associations of Television Content Type and Obesity in Children,” American Journal of Public Health, (February 2010). The researchers found that TV viewing per se does not contribute to obesity. Rather, the evidence suggests that advertising
content “is associated with obesity.”
In the other study, published online February 8 in Pediatrics, Dartmouth Medical School researchers analyzed the use of food, beverage and restaurant brands in the top 20 movies from 1996 through 2005. “Food, beverage, and food retail establishment brands are frequently portrayed in movies, and most of the brand placements are for energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods or product lines,” according to the study’s
abstract. “Movies are a potent source of advertising to children, which has been largely overlooked.”
Nestle also noted that Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and his colleagues have written an article in the American Journal of Public Health detailing how the food industry’s self-regulation is “not working and what would be needed to make it work.” According to Nestle, “Michelle Obama may not be able to touch this one. But Congress can. And it should.” See
Food Politics, February 11, 2010.
Meanwhile, the American Beverage Association announced that some of its members will start this year to voluntarily add calorie counts to the front of soft drink cans, bottles, vending machines, and soda fountains so that consumers can make better- informed choices. “The companies will coordinate with the Food and Drug Administration to implement the calorie initiative, which will go above and
beyond what is required by the federal agency’s food labeling regulations,” the association stated in a February 9 press release.
