Recent events on the obesity front
Good news (sort of): Overall obesity rates in children seem to be stabilizing. Rates rose from 1998-2003 but did not change much from 2003-2007, with one exception: rates are still rising among American Indian/Alaskan Native children. Here’s a map of childhood obesity rates by state (thanks to the Wall Street Journal). Rates are decreasing in a few states! Oregon has the lowest rates (less than 10%). Mississippi has the highest (21%).
Overweight children are more influenced by advertisements for branded products than are average weight children, according to a pilot (preliminary) study in Appetite. Evidence for restrictions on advertising? I think so.
The CDC has produced a policy-wonkish list of 22 Recommended Community Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States. These are suggestions for what communities should do to make it easier for people to eat less (or better) and move more. Examples: “Communities Should Provide Incentives to Food Retailers to Locate in and/or Offer Healthier Food and Beverage Choices in Underserved Areas,” and “Communities Should Improve Availability of Mechanisms for Purchasing Foods from Farms.” These are all good “shoulds.” The report gives ideas for measuring the success of such initiatives but does not discuss how to implement them, alas.
[Posted from New Delhi]
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I think it’s good that the CDC doesn’t discuss how it should be done. In New York for example, they tried to implement those fruit carts in the food deserts of NYC. That’s a good idea. It’s maybe something that the CDC could suggest other communities to look at, but programs like that are so specific to a community that it may not even be viable in other cities.
On the map, how does it work that some states (e.g. Texas) show higher rates of obese children than of overweight children?
That’s easy. IIRC overweight means 85~95th percentile by age and height and obese means ≥95th percentile. The studies used to determine percentile are from a meta-analysis of several studies from the 1950s to the 1970s.
With American Indian and Alaska Native kids one big reason for the continuing increase in obesity is fairly obvious when you look at government foodstuffs. Mostly flour and vegetable shortening. In other words purified macronutrient with minimal nutritional value. The shortening for instance is 4.381% linoleic acid and .037% linolenic acid. It’s 30.867% elaidic acid (trans fat) in the mean time. Of course it’s pure fat with the 9 calories per gram that implies. To get all the linoleic acid a typical woman needs daily would require 2739 grams of shortening. The linolenic acid requirement is worse: 3.24*10^6 grams of shortening!
Commodity flour has all the same issues all refined carbohydrate does.
would love to see average household income 2003 vs 2007 compared to the obesity rates, or per cent of state budget spent on public health and education 2003 vs 2007.
While marketing plays an important role in childhood obesity, I truly believe that parents and communities hold the ultimate responsibility for children’s health. We need to get junk food out of our schools and other places that children frequent. If they don’t have the access, they won’t consume it! We also need to make sure that we are supporting businesses in our communities that are bringing fresh food to low-income neighborhoods. Remember, they won’t eat what they don’t have access to!
Childhood obesity rates are highest in low-income neighborhoods where they have little to no access to fresh, quality foods – but plenty of choices for inexpensive, over-processed food filled with fat, high fructose corn syrup, additives & preservatives and little vitamins and minerals.
We need to educate the community members and fight for better options. This will take more than a village!
I’m reading the CDC Community Strategies to Prevent Obesity and I’m struck by how many of the strategies seem best suited for federal intervention (local communities should provide incentives for the production, distribution, and procurement of foods from local farms? Isn’t the encouragement of local production of crops other than commodities a place that the federal government has the most leverage on via the Farm Bill? Local governments should limit advertisements of less healthy foods? Again, isn’t that more the place of the FCC?) Is CDC just pushing these down to the local level because there is a reluctance to engage on the real driver of the obesity epidemic – the food industry and federal food policy.
The only bright spot is the the direction that “Communities should discourage consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.” Finally, a government entity saying “Drink less soda.”