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Adults, obese and otherwise

Sunday, February 12th, 2012

PIck well and cut back your waste/waist

In my last post I explained the concept and the math behind the body mass index (BMI) approach to evaluating if your weight was normal or not (your BMI is very  well in synch with the most scientific methods of determining body fat percentages). Now I want to expand on that a bit  with some recent statistics and some thoughts on how we can lose weight if we need to. Unfortunately, some of us have lots of extra pounds we should shed if we want to have our best shot at leading long, healthy lives.

The Feb 1, 2012 issue of JAMA had a number of interesting articles on obesity. I've previously mentioned several on childhood and adolescent obesity; today I'd like to zero in on two whose focus is American adults.

Four CDC staffers, led by Katherine Flegal, PhD, published the most recent statistics from a recurring national survey with the daunting acronym NHANES. This national health and nutrition survey (the E stands for examination) started in 1971, but from 1999 on has been released results in two-year cycles. The current article from the National Center for Health Statistics, looking at the 2009-2010 NHANES data had a little good news and lots of bad news.

After 1980, until the turn of the 21st century, the prevalence (scientific term for percentage) of obesity in our population kept zooming up. Now it appears to have leveled off. I guess that's something we should be happy about, except now over 35% of adults in this country are obese. Men and women have about equally high rates of obesity and men have caught up to women in this regard over the last twelve years. Some subsets, by sex and racial groups, are even more likely to be obese or very obese.

The worst news from this article was that no group--men, women, non-Hispanic whites, Hispanics or non-Hispanic blacks--had a decrease in the prevalence of obesity in this most recent data set.

So which exercise and diet should we try?

getting enough exercise is difficult when your joints hurt

Many adults report "No Leisure-Time Physical activity." Overall, more of us are exercising, but the data vary from state to state. Those who have arthritis, fifty million in the US, need special attention or are even more likely to get no exercise. The CDC has worked with the Arthritis Foundation to develop ideas for this huge group. Going back to my review of articles on youngsters, I think for the rest of us, we could begin with simple steps, parking at the far end of the parking lot and substituting some walking for part of our screen time as two examples.

Harvard Medical School's free online HEALTHbeat publication had a review of pros and cons of various diets in its Feb 7, 2012 edition. The bottom line still is if you want to lose weight, you must cut down on your calories. The Mediterranean-style emphasis on fruits and vegetables, unrefined carbohydrates, nuts, seeds and fish may be the most effective in reducing cardiovascular and diabetic risks.

My New Year's Resolution is to keep my weight under 150 pounds. I have to work at it as I like to eat, but most of the time I've stayed away from splurges.

How about you?

 

JAMA

 

 

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Posted in body mass index (BMI), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Complications of Obesity, coronary artery disease, diabetes type 2, Life Expectancy, Life extension, medically-oriented background info, Metabolic Syndrome, Obesity, Publications, Weight Loss | No Comments »

Vindication?: part 2

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

here's a high-protein diet

In my my previous post, I talked about my own dieting program, but mentioned a very recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, typically called JAMA. I came across a newspaper article on this research study while reading The Wall Street Journal . Now I want to analyze  the  JAMA article. Let me give you a quick overview and then I'll tell you what bothers me about the implications.

Three groups of relatively young people (18 to 35) were fed extra calories with varying amounts  of protein while living in a special metabolic unit. They all gained weight, but those fed a low-protein diet gained less. That group increased their total body fat just like the others did, but did not gain "lean body mass" (that's anything but fat: i.e., bones, organ weight and muscles), while those on a normal protein intake and those eating more protein than usual gained not just fat, but also muscle mass. So calories count more than composition of a diet, but extra calories with too little protein leads to weight gain that's all fat (90% of those surplus calories formed fat; 10% went into the energy necessary to do so).

Okay, that's the classic comic version. Let me dissect the study and its conclusions a bit more.

This was a relatively short-term study of what happens when people overeat.  The extra calories the subjects ate were in the form of fat. It was also a small study with only twenty-five subjects who were healthy non-smokers, weren't allowed alcohol or caffeine and had stable weights to begin with. They varied from quite lean to overweight, but none of them were obese. It was a "single-blind" study, that usually translates to meaning a study in which either the investigator or the participant, but not both of them, is unaware of the nature of the treatment the participant is receiving; in this case only the kitchen staff knew who was in which diet group.

The research was exceedingly well done with careful methods, an inpatient ward for the study subjects, a preliminary period where diets were adjusted to keep their weight constant, and lots of state-of-the art measurements of how much fat and how much muscle each person had before and after the eight-week diet.

So far, so good: eating too much makes you gain weight; lots of that weight is fat. Eating more protein tends to add muscle (I can't see that their bones got heavier or the basic weight of their organs, though they likely accumulated some fat).

all vegetarian food

All that makes sense to me; now how does that apply to dieting? I think it likely does, but that's not what this study was designed to show. The question that remains is what should I eat if I want to lose weight? I just found an article in The Telegraph (a London paper I never read otherwise). The title was "Vegetarian low protein diet could be key to long life."

Unfortunately, the study was done in fruit flies. The lead author said "...similar results have been found in mice." Thus far a variety of studies in animals imply we can live longer by eating less. I'll accept that, but for now, until there are large-group human studies, I'm sticking to reasonable amounts of protein and less overall calories.

 

 

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Vindication? Part 1

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

One way to get lots of protein

Since the late 1990s when I invented a diet, or perhaps I should say an eating pattern, I've relied on one principal concept: Eat Less; Do More. I came upon this simple idea after listening to a group of medical professionals who were discussing which diet they should go on while they were simultaneously consuming huge portions at our hospital cafeteria.

One of them, I recalled, had tried a high-carb, low-protein diet the past year; losing nearly twenty pounds, then regained it all and more in a few months. Now she was going to attempt  to lose twenty-five pounds with a different approach, this one with an emphasis on protein. I had seen weight-loss plans come and go and didn't believe any of them were the answer, at least not for everyone. I remember coming home and saying to my wife, "Lynn, I've invented a new diet"

I explained it was simply, "Never finish anything; No snacks between (meals); Nothing after eight." I added, "Get lots of exercise."

I lost the seven pounds I had gained on a two-week vacation and didn't need my strategy again until early in 2009. Then I weighed 177 one morning, up three pounds from my normal weight since 1991. I attributed that to eating out four times in the prior week. But when I tried on a pair of good suit slacks, I realized the weight hadn't changed much, but the distribution sure had.

I went back to my eating plan, lost five pounds easily, then coasted a while before resuming the diet. Lynn bought me a digital scale and I weighed myself daily. I also started going to our gym six days a week. Eventually I shed thirty pounds and five inches off my waistline. At 147 pounds I was twenty-five under my usual high school weight. This morning, nearly two years later, I weighed 148.

I allow myself a three-pound zone of weight fluctuation, thinking that would account for fluid shifts and the occasional big splurge. Whenever I exceed 150 pounds I go back on my plan.

Then I read a Wall Street Journal article titled "New Ways Calories Can Add Up to Weight Gain: Study Challenges Idea That Varying Amounts Of Fat, Protein and Carbohydrates Are Key to Weight Loss." It quoted the Journal of the American Medical Association, AKA: JAMA. I went online and found the JAMA article and an accompanying editorial.

I read both pieces in detail, even finding a wild typo, "...their diets were returned to baseline energy levels and diet compositions (15% from protein, 35% from fat and 60% from carbohydrate)." I called the AMA and suggested they correct the numbers since they added to 110%.

Is a high-carb, low-protein diet safer?

But the basic premise of the study's data intrigued me. It's something I've believed for years, calories count, as opposed to what form those calories come in. But there's one extra facet: low-protein diets can be dangerous.

I'll analyze that in detail in my next post.

 

 

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Posted in balanced diets, dietary protein content, Dieting, Exercise possibilities, Governmental Efforts, Healthy food shopping, medically-oriented background info, physician initiatives, Publications, scientific controversies, Unhealthy eating, Vegetables, Weight Loss | No Comments »

Slim down those truckers

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

some truckers are relatively slender

I have two series of posts going, but couldn't resist the article I found in the New York Times while riding a recumbent bike in the gym. The title alone, "A Hard Turn: Better Health on the Highway," was enough to grab my attention.

The first story was typical, a trucker driving long hours every day, eating all the wrong foods, getting no exercise, gaining huge amounts of weight. I found the online abstract of a 2007 Journal of the American Dietetic Association article cited: long-haul truckers of necessity eat at truck stops and of 92 such truckers stopping at a Mid-eastern US truck stop nearly 86% were overweight and 56.5% were obese.

One of our family members used to be a truck driver and I've heard his stories of long days spent behind the wheel, eating greasy foods when he stopped. He's slimmer now and in better shape as his current employment allows him more exercise time and a choice of where and what to eat.

Now that insurance costs are rising sharply, the trucking firms are getting involved and the truckers themselves, there's over three million of them in the US, are coming to grips with the issue out of necessity. One group ran a blood-pressure screening clinic for 2,000 truckers at a truck show. Twenty-one were immediately sent to a nearby emergency room; one had a heart attack before reaching the hospital.

drive carefully around trucks like this

Trucks are involved in 400,000 accidents a year and 5,000 fatalities. I just watched a nearly eighteen minute video on how we, as drivers of passenger vehicles, contribute to those accidents; 70% are caused by the drivers of other vehicles (see link below). Yet many of the ones caused by trucker driver error occur because the trucker has a health problem or falls asleep.

http://www.sharetheroadsafely.org/cardrivers/Unsafe-Driving-Acts.asp

Some truckers are taking steps to decrease their weight and its accompanying risks for themselves and those who share the roads with them. A number of companies are helping (and perhaps finding a lucrative new client group). I just looked at a website for "Rolling Strong," and found a gym in my area that offers fitness programs for truckers. Others are joining Weight Watchers, a solid organization that my slender wife has belonged to for many years (she says she was "chunky" in high school) or creating their own programs for fitness: one carries a fold-up bike in his 18-wheeler and uses it whenever he stops for a break. Many are cooking in their trucks or even hiring a trainer.

Others joined the Healthy Truckers Association of America, paying $7.50 a month to belong to an organization that is rapidly growing (see link below to Chicago tribune article). That group now offers truckers a prescription drug card enabling its members to save ~60% on meds.

http://healthytruck.org/node/101

I applaud all these moves; if I'm on the road with a large truck or a series of them, I'd like their drivers to be in shape and wide awake.

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Posted in Complications of Obesity, diabetes type 2, Dieting, Exercise possibilities, Food Choices, Governmental Efforts, Healthly lifestyle, Holiday/travel eating, Obesity, Publications, tricks and gimmicks, Weight Loss | No Comments »

Getting it off versus keeping it off

Saturday, October 29th, 2011

What should you do when your scale calls for help?

I saw an interesting New York Times article on the 26th and kept it on my Kindle. It mentioned an article which just was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on why people who succeed in losing weight often find it difficult to not regain the pounds they've lost. Prior studies have speculated that a dieter's metabolism changes with altered hormone levels bringing about increases in appetite.

I just looked at the short form of the NEJM article online; I don't subscribe to that publication anymore and will have to get the whole article at the local hospital's medical library. It's a small but significant study, done by researchers in Melbourne, Australia utilizing fifty overweight or obese patients on an extreme ten-week diet, measuring levels of a number of hormones involved in appetite both at the end of the diet period and one year later.

The goal was to have the subjects lose ten percent of their body weight. Then they were to go on a maintenance diet to keep the weight off. Only thirty-four finished the diet period with the goal weight loss, some quit the study and others lost less than 10%.

So it's really a very small group, thirty-four successful dieters, who were followed for an additional year. They started at an average of 209 pounds, ate only 500 to 550 calories a day for the initial ten-week study period and lost an average of 29 pounds (14%) of their initial weight. A year later the average patient had gained back half what they had lost and the hormone measurements, especially of leptin, ghrelin and peptide YY, all involved in appetite one way or the other, were still not totally back to normal.

Maybe that's the reason so many people gain weight back after dieting. This may not have  been a large-scale study, but it speaks volumes.

Eat a healthy diet, not a 500-calorie/day plunge

The Los Angles Times commended on the article and on dieting in general. They noted that four out of five initially successful dieters regain their weight, sometimes more than they lost by dieting. Of course most of them hadn't gone on such a stringent diet. It makes much more sense to me to lose weight gradually, a pound or so a week is a reasonable goal.

I did that back in early 2009, losing ~30 pounds, and this morning I was still 27 pounds down. I also decided to make exercise a must in my busy schedule and go to the gym six days a week on the average. I can burn ~550 calories on the recumbent bike before I do stretches and work on a few machines. I also walk our new dog twice a day for 20-30 minutes.

Many people say they can't find that much time in their day and yet they find time for TV or movies or their email.

I think it's time to change priorities; take some of the time you spend sitting and walk or exercise instead. Gradual weight loss combined with an increase in calories burned makes much more sense than going on 500-calorie diets. I'd like to see measurements of those same hormones in a group who try this approach.

Otherwise you're just paraphrasing Admiral David Farragut at the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay, "Damn those hormone levels; full speed ahead."

 

 

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Reading Taubes: part one

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

Avoid white bread

A while back one of my blog readers asked if I had ever read Taubes. I wasn't sure if that was a book title, a diet plan or an author, so I Googled the word and eventually purchased two books written by a veteran science writer, Gary Taubes.

Taubes studied applied physics at Harvard and areospace engineering at Stanford, then wrote articles for Discover and Science plus four books. He looks for scientific controversises and wades into them. In July 2002 he published an article in the New York Times Magazine titled "What if it's All Been a Big Fat Lie,"

The article takes us back to the Adkins diet craze. Dr. Atkins, trained in cardiology, was significantly overweight and used a JAMA study as a basis for his own personal diet plan. He then published two books urging dieters to severely limit carbohydrate consumption. At one point it was estimated that one out of eleven North American adults were on his diet. His company made over $100 million, but filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2005, two years after he died.

Taubes explores some of the same turf, saying it's refined carbohydrates that make us fat. His initial plunge into the field was the NYT piece, followed by a 2007 book, Good Calories, Bad Calories and now a 2011 book, Why We get Fat: and What to do About It.

Taubes has hefty credentials as a science writer; he is the only print journalist to have received the Science in Society Journalism Award three times. Currently he's a Robert Woods Johnson Foundation investigator in Health Policy Research at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. But his initial article ignited a firestorm. In the piece Taubes mentions that the common veiwpoint links the kickoff of the obesity epidemic  (in the early 1980s), to cheap fatty foods, large portion servings (at commercial establishments presumably), an increase in food advertisements and a sedentary lifestyle.

He would beg to differ, invoking what he terms "Endocrinology 101," an explanation that says human evolution was not designed for a high-sugar, high-starch diet. Until a comparatively recent era (roughly 10,000 years ago) we were not agriculturists, but hunter-gatherers. So Taubes thinks the problem is our increased consumption of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white bread, pasta &  white rice.

Others think he picks and chooses his facts. I don't think he's wrong in his basic premise, but he also disagrees with the ideas of "calories in; calories out," avoiding saturated fats and exercising being important in weight control (He seems to think people who exercise then hurry off to eat more).

more than one way to "thin a cat"

I'm down thirty pounds since early in 2009, have easily kept the weight off by exercising six days a week, avoiding sugar & HFCS foods and eating lots  more veggies and fruits while cutting back on portion size of meat dishes.

I'll read more on Taubes and his detractors and let you know what I agree with and what I don't.

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Hypertension: some good news

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Let's check your BP

I was reading a blog post from May 2010 written by an unidentified cardiologist. Some of the underlying issues were worth following to better sources. The blog stated that high blood pressure is our most common chronic disease. It went on to mention the connection between BP and weight, saying, as a nation, America is one million tons overweight. It claimed that ten pounds of weight loss could normalize the BP of many Americans.

I initially got into today's data search because of a Wall Street Journal article (Personal Journal; May 31, 2010; pp.D1-2) titled "A Long-Awaited Advance in the War on Blood Pressure." I Googled the author, Ron Winslow and he is the deputy editor for health and science and a senior medical and health care writer for WSJ with over a thousand articles written.

He reported that the American Society for Hypertension (ASH) met in New York last week (May 21-24,2011) and Dr. Brent Eagan, the vice president of ASH, and Professor of Medicine at the University of South Carolina reported some real progress on the multi-state Hypertension Initiative he heads. It's working with ~500 primary care practitioners and over 110,000 hypertensive patients in the Southeast. Nearly 70% of their patient have controlled BPs now (vs. 40% a decade ago).

About as far away as you can get in the U.S., Kaiser Permanente's northern California branch follows >600,000 patients with hypertension and reported at the same ASH meeting that 80% of that group have controlled BP readings compared to 44% ten years back.

One of the Kaiser patients had a regular checkup in 2007 and had mildly elevated BPs then (145/74). Her own comment was, "Here in northern California, we believe in exercise and good nutrition and we're not into pills."

Yet her doctors started her on two medications for hypertension and early this year her BP was 117/74. She's walking three miles three times a week, eating fruits and vegetables and going to a strength-training class at a gym. I don't know if she lost weight also, but I wouldn't be surprised. I mentioned in an earlier post, that my own BP fell markedly after I lost ~25 pounds, and the dosage of the anti-hypertensive drug I've been on for years had to be cut in half.

Guess who's at higher risk for CV disease

So why am I writing about this in a blog devoted mostly to weight/diet/exercise?  First, there's an increased awareness of the association between excess weight, high BP and cardiovascular risk at all ages. An article in the Feb 3, 2009 edition of Circulation looked at the issue in children and adolescents. Concentrating on the Metabolic Syndrome (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, abnormal blood lipids), there was, even in these young people, a definite correlation between the degree of obesity and cardiovascular risk. They stated that strong evidence places obesity as the most significant risk factor

Can I tie all this together? Well I'd say bluntly that obesity is our major enemy, it's a major causal factor in hypertension which is being treated pharmacologically at earlier stages and that diet and exercise are extremely useful ways to combat both entities.


Posted in Complications of Obesity, Hypertension, Life extension, Obesity, Publications, Weight Loss | No Comments »

Brian Wansink's "Mindless Eating" concept

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Don't fill your plate this way

I just read Brian Wansink's book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Wansink got a PhD in Consumer Behavior from Stanford and from 2007 to 2009 was the USDA's Executive Director for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. He's currently in an Endowed Chair at Cornell and won the humorous Ig Nobel Prize in 2007.

If you've never heard of the Ig Nobel Prizes, Google the term. They started in 1991 and were originally given for discoveries "that cannot, or should not be, reproduced." They are presented by Nobel laureates in a ceremony  sponsored by three Harvard groups, broadcast on NPR, on the Internet and on Science Friday the day after Thanksgiving. Some are thinly veiled criticism (BP was a co-winner in 2010 for disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix). Most are for serious work that has a humorous slant (malaria-carrying mosquitoes are equally attracted to the smell of Camembert cheese and human feet; this led to insect traps in Africa being baited with that cheese).

In Wansink's case, his award was given in the Nutrition category for studying people's appetite for mindless eating by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.

His work has focused on how our environment influences our eating habits. Wansink says we all make well over 200 food choices a day (what to eat, what to drink, how much of each) and we rarely know why we make those decisions or if they are helpful/healthy choices.

For instance, one of his experiments showed using smaller plates can help you serve and eat less. Another concerned fat-free foods, which may have nearly as many calories (and sometimes more) than the standard version of the same food item. In one of his studies, normal-weight subjects given low-fat foods actually consumer one-sixth more calories and overweight subjects took in nearly 50% more calories.

Wansink says low-fat foods have a "health halo;" we think they're better for us and therefore, in a sense, give ourselves permission to eat more of them.

Container size is another of his "food trap" areas. When presented with a larger package, a larger bottle of a soda or a short, fat glass to pour a drink into, we end up eating or drinking more.

He suggests a series of food trade-offs and food policies (if I want that doughnut, I need to spend an hour walking; I'll only eat snacks when I'm sitting at the table).

Try eating with these instead of a knife and fork

I liked Wansink's books, already had been using many of his strategies, but found others I can adopt. I think his studies and concepts are valid and his ~300-page publication well worth reading.If you do so, you may find yourself using chopsticks the next time you eat Chinese food. You'll likely eat less per bite and eat slower.

I may try them for American food.

 

Posted in Complications of Obesity, Life Expectancy, medically-oriented background info, Obesity, Publications, strategies for healthy aging, Unhealthy eating, Weight Loss | No Comments »

Leave it to we Beaver's

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

a tree, post-beaver

The May 4, 2011 edition of the Wall Street Journal had an article that quickly send me to my computer. The title was "Why Wood Pulp Makes Ice Cream Creamier." Well, until I read the article and then hunted down background information, I certainly didn't know I could be chewing on logs (or derivatives thereof) in my daily diet

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an organization I generally trust, has a website on food additives. There's a couple of pages on the good, the semi-bad and the ugly (as I would phrase it) and then 25+ pages on specific additives. I'll drop in a link to that fascinating section of the CSPI's web content if you want to learn more and perhaps return to the general topic in a later post. http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm

In the meantime back to the May 4th article and its cousins. I say that since Googling "wood pulp in food" yields links to a considerable number of articles, blogs and other Internet-accessible items on the subject. I just printed out a page from a blog from India, a 2006 Dow Chemical Company's attorney's letter (the first page of 68) requesting an exemption to for considering wood pulp as a food additive and an FDA paper on the subject.

cellulose

The bottom line is CPSI in their extensive listing of food additives rates carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) in their group "Cut Back: Not toxic, but large amounts may be unsafe or promote bad nutrition."

Yet processed food manufacturers are using more CMC and other cellulose (read this as wood pulp) deriviatives to increase fiber content of white bread (I don't eat white bread), allow hurried/lazy cooks to add pre-shredded cheese (we shred our own) and enhance something called "mouth feel" in ice cream.

To make the powdered form of cellulose, wood is cooked in chemicals to separate the constituent and then, in some cases, processed further with acid to break down the fiber.

If made properly, (ah, there's that word "if" again), cellulose is a). supposed to be harmless in small amounts and b). isn't absorbed by the body, thus adding bulk to foods without adding calories. It also adds fiber to foods that otherwise are low in this component.

The WSJ article quotes Michael Jacobson, the CSPI's executive director, as saying, "Cellulose is cellulose." He then apparently said that no research points to health problems secondary to eating cellulose.

The FDA limits the percentage of cellulose in some foods (e.g., cheese spread and jams) and sets an upper ceiling (usually 1 to 4 %) for how much cellulose can be added to meat products.

Well I know we need fiber in our diet and it appears that this additive isn't bad for you. But I prefer not to eat processed foods and to get my fiber in natural forms.

So I Googled "Food high in fiber" and found a Mayo Clinic website that listed, amoung other foods: raspberries, unpeeled pears and apples, whole-wheat spaghetti, bran flakes, cooked split peas and lentils and artichokes.

It's your choice; Processed foods with added wood pulp or plain old fruits and veggies.

Chew on!

 

Posted in Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Additives, Governmental Efforts, tricks and gimmicks, Weight Loss | 1 Comment »

Obese kids, a growing problem

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

eating too much of the wrong things

There is a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today about how Portland, Maine, concerning about the growing number of obese kids in the community, developed a city-wide plan to combat the issue. Their concept has now spread elsewhere in the state.

Well that caught my attention and I started looking for background medical and non-medical data. Many of the websites I visited initially were poorly written, causing me to move on, but I found one for the 6th Biennial Childhood Obesity Conference to be held in San Diego starting 0n June 27th (www.childhood-obesity.net). The underlying dire fact is the percentage of kids in the US who are overweight or frankly obese has nearly tripled in the last thirty years.

The conference offers youth scholarships for travel, hotel accommodations, meals (presumably healthy ones) and registration/materials fees. This way kids ages 14 to 18 can meet with medical experts, teachers, policy makers and other kids to hear the evidence-based best approaches to combating obesity.

some start off the wrong way

Former President Bill Clinton's foundation's web page said we've got ~25 million kids in the overweight and obese danger zones and the medical therapy for obese kids costs us three times that of normal weight kids. Twenty-five percent of our children don't engage in any kind of free-time physical activity.

So is it genetics or food or activity that's causing the problem. I think the answer is "yes," but I'd certainly put more emphasis on the latter two factors. Less than 25% of our high school kids take PE on a daily basis; instead they spend an average of four to five hours a day doing non-exertional "techy" activities including video games, computer use and even plain old television watching.

So back to Portland's plan. They developed a 5-2-1-0 concept: five servings of fruits and veggies, 2 hours or less of "screen time," at least one hour of exercise a day and zero sugar-filled drinks. They've already reversed the upward trend in obesity, but at considerable cost ($3.7 million) and with some difficulty in measuring the results. Now the CDC has recently given over a quarter of a billion dollars to 39 US communities in an effort to both start programs and follow their outcome.

I Googled the name of Dr. Victoria Rogers, a pediatrician mentioned in the article. She works as Director of the Kids Co-op at the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital at Maine Medical Center and is involved in the 5-2-1-0 Goes to School program, another  Portland-based program called "Let's Go!," and the state-wide Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative.

In Maine alone, Let's GO is now active in nearly 350 schools and the local business men and women who funded the original project are able to see some preliminary results already. One phone survey found increasing (but still relatively low) percentages of kids adopting healthier eating and exercise habits. Dr. Rogers and her cohorts want to follow 1,500 kids who are in the Let's Go! study long term to see if they change their eating and exercise habits for a lifetime.

So what's happening in your town or city and your state. It's our kids; we have to make a difference in their lives and this is a great way to do so.

 

 

Posted in Exercise possibilities, Governmental Efforts, Healthy eating, Obesity, our kids and their weight issues, Publications, Weight Loss | No Comments »

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