We'll be heading down to Colorado Springs on Thursday for the Pikes Peak Writers Conference (and my 69th birthday dinner with cousins). So instead of writing blog posts on Tuesday and Friday, as I normally do, this week I decided to "blog ahead."
Two articles in our local paper got my attention recently. One I'll pair with an article and also with an accompanying editorial comment from the Annals of Internal Medicine, but that can wait till Wednesday as I've not yet fully digested (no pun intended) the dietary advice from the three sources.
Today I wanted to mention a local initiative from the Food Bank for Larimer County, one of our favorite non-profits. I've worked volunteer shifts there when I belonged to a Rotary Club and my wife and I always give the Food Bank one of our larger yearly donations when we start figuring out what we can manage to give to charities.
The organization's director, Amy Pezzani, said in the paper that the Food Bank had 32,000 more visits in 2009 than in 2008. One fifth of our kids in the county are receiving food through schools, food stamps or the Food bank itself.
Yet data collected by other groups says that in that same time period, more than half of our Larimer County residents fall into the overweight and obese groups and one fourth of our students in the K-12 category (I didn't see any statistics for Colorado State University students).
Now the Food Bank has combined their need for more food with our region's excess weight issue. A national TV show gave the local folk the idea of a "Pound for Pound Challenge and Pezzani and her crew have gotten over 700 local residents to pledge to lose nearly 20 pounds each by July. So far, they were up to a 13,000-pound pledge and they're aiming at 50,000 pounds.
Each participant joins the challenge by registering online with a local ZIP code and gives the Food Bank a small donation equivalent to the number of pounds they plan to lose. Pezzani said the 50,000 pound goal would be the the equivalent of two truckloads of food. At the time the article was written, Colorado was ranked 12th in the country in the contest with 135,000 pounds being pledged and Larimer County was third in the state.
Talk about a win-win situation. This idea should be publicized even more widely than it already has. Spread the word.
This is a great idea! Since we're also Food Bank supporters, and goodness knows I need to lose the pounds, I'll pop over there and sign up. Thanks, Peter.
And have a great time at the conference. I'll be looking forward to your report.