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Junk food advertising will be banned from London’s tube and bus network, under plans put forward by the city’s mayor that steal a march on Theresa May. Sadiq Khan said the move was necessary to curb the “ticking timebomb” of child obesity, which has left almost 40 per cent of 10 and 11-year-olds in the capital overweight or obese. Hot food takeaways would also be barred from opening within 400 metres of schools, under a new draft London Food Strategy published today. “If we don’t take bold steps against child obesity we are not doing right by our young people,...

Former first lady Michelle Obama on Friday bashed critics who complain that kids don't like the healthier food served under the school meal changes implemented during the Obama administration. "How about we not let kids completely guide everything?" she said, speaking at the annual summit on childhood obesity for the Partnership for a Healthier America. "How about we stop asking kids how they feel about their food? Kids, my kids included, if they could eat pizza and french fries every day with ice cream on top and a soda, they would think they were happy, until they got sick. "That...

>Log in Kellogg's Honey Smacks Leads List of Unhealthy Cereals Many kids' cereals pack more sugar than Twinkies and cookies 12/07/2011 | ConsumerAffairs |  Health facebook twitter google+ emailprint By Truman Lewis A former reporter and bureau chief for broadcast outlets and magazines, Truman Lewis has covered presidential campaigns, state politics and stories ranging from organized crime to environmental protection.  Read Full Bio→ Email Truman Lewis  Phone: 866-773-0221 Google+ Parents have good reason to worry about the sugar content of children’s breakfast cereals, according to an Environmental Working Group review of 84 popular brands. Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, at nearly 56 percent sugar...

It’s been more than six years since Michelle Obama kicked off her “Let’s Move!” initiative to fight against childhood obesity, and children are as overweight as ever before. That’s according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal Obesity. A team led by Duke University scientist Asheley Skinner studied data from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and found that the percentage of overweight and obese children between 2 and 19 years old has increased across the board since 1999. That comes as bad news for the Obama administration, which has sought to force children to...

The researchers from University College London studied nearly 3,000 families in five regions in the UK who were taking part in the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP). They measured the children’s BMI, which in Britain is broken down into three categories: normal weight, overweight (above the 85th percentile), or very overweight (i.e., equivalent to obese in the US, above the 95th percentile). The team also asked the kids’ parents what BMI group they thought they fit into. It turned out that parents were extraordinarily poor at determining whether their children were overweight or obese. Of the 369 kids who were...

Michelle Obama said Thursday that the U.S. has undergone a “culture change” in the five years since she started raising awareness about childhood obesity. But as she celebrated achievements on multiple fronts, the first lady also warned that the progress that’s been made is “incredibly fragile.” That’s because special interests “whose first priority is not our kids’ health” are “waiting for us to get complacent or bored and move on to the next trendy issue,” Mrs. Obama said at an annual health summit. She cited the fight over a recent child nutrition law as an example. “Even today, some folks...

Doctors at the University Clinic in Ulm have discovered a new disease causing obesity while studying an extremely overweight three-year-old. The child weighed more than 40 kilos, almost three times as much as a normal three-year-old, and could not stop eating and gaining weight. Researchers found that the “satiety hormone” that tells the body to stop eating was inactive, meaning the child was always hungry. But in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, they described how they were able to bring their patient’s eating and weight under control within days by giving the child an artificial form...

Michelle Obama’s new dietary restrictions is so bad that they can’t even GIVE the food away. A million kids have turned away from Obama’s school lunch and schools are feeling the huge hit. Via The Hill: More than a million kids confronted by healthier school lunches are turning up their noses, leaving the cafeteria and heading out to get a burger instead. The difficulty in getting students to eat lower-fat, lower-sodium meals is at the center of a food fight between House Republicans and first lady Michelle Obama that erupted this week.

WASHINGTON — (TG) “Let’s Move!,” the anti-obesity campaign launched by First Lady Michelle Obama, is rushing to the defense of Americans in the wake of a shameful study by the Department of Agriculture revealing that despite a raging epidemic of obesity that shows no sign of abating, nearly one third of the food produced in the U.S. ends up in the trash rather than in one of the nation’s 316 million ever-expanding stomachs. That stacks up to 33 million tons – worth an estimated $161 billion and containing a staggering 141 trillion calories of energy – discarded each year. While...

U. MISSOURI (US) — Vitamin D supplements can help obese children and teens control their blood-sugar levels, which may help lower their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.“By increasing vitamin D intake alone, we got a response that was nearly as powerful as what we have seen using a prescription drug,” says Catherine Peterson, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. “We saw a decrease in insulin levels, which means better glucose control, despite no changes in body weight, dietary intake, or physical activity.”For the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers...

Goodbye candy bars and sugary cookies. Hello baked chips and diet sodas. The government for the first time is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful, a change that would ban the sale of almost all candy, high-calorie sports drinks and greasy foods on campus. Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending machines would start selling water, lower-calorie sports drinks, diet sodas and baked chips instead. Lunchrooms that now sell fatty “à la carte” items like mozzarella sticks and nachos would have to switch to healthier pizzas, low-fat...

he conglomerate's child-focused radio stations and websites will also launch strict standards for food ads, which CEO Bob Iger is expected to unveil with first lady Michelle Obama. Disney on Tuesday will unveil plans to keep junk food ads off its child-focused TV networks, radio stations and web sites, The New York Times reported.

The theme for the Easter Egg Roll at the White House may have been 'Let’s Go, Let’s Play, Let’s Move!', following the First Lady's campaign against obesity - but the menu on offer would have satisfied any couch potato. The Obamas welcomed thousands of children and their parents on to the South Lawn this morning to feast on a brunch menu that included waffles, French toast and slurpees. Later in the day, visitors were offered choices of cheeseburgers, chicken tenders, hot dog and curly fries, egg salad or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

First Lady Michelle Obama received a warm welcome from the students and teachers at an elementary school Wednesday where she promoted new tougher nutrition standards for school meals. The students clapped and cheered as Mrs. Obama entered the cafeteria at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va. The first lady, who was was joined by celebrity chef Rachael Ray and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, picked up food from the lunch line before sitting with the kids and teachers. Obama and Vilsack unveiled the updated nutrition standards for school meals required by the 2010 school nutrition bill.

How many children can say they have had lunch with the First Lady? Parklawn Elementary School students were joined Wednesday by First Lady Michelle Obama, who visited the school during lunchtime to unveil new national health standards for school cafeteria meals. “When we send our kids to school, we expect that they won’t be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we try to keep them from eating at home,” Obama said during a meeting with parents and press in Parklawn’s library before having a turkey-taco lunch with second- and fourth-grade students in the cafeteria. The school’s menu...

A series of stark anti-obesity ads featuring miserable, overweight kids has sparked controversy in Georgia. The ads feature children talking about their weight issues in between harrowing messages such as, “Some diseases aren’t just for adults anymore,” and “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which co-founded the Strong4Life ad campaign, intended for the ads to be grim, hoping the clips would help parents recognize the severity of the obesity epidemic in Georgia, where it is the second highest in the nation.

"Nasty, Rotty Stuff" That's the verdict from student Mayra Gutierrez on the new healthful menu introduced this year by the Los Angeles Unified School District. And she's not alone, according to the L.A. Times. "At Van Nuys High School," reports the paper, "complaints about the food were so widespread that Principal Judith Vanderbok wrote to [food services director Dennis] Barrett with the plea: 'Please help! Bring back better food!'" Readers might wonder how, with all of the challenges in reading, writing and arithmetic, school administrators decided that reducing fat and sodium at the cafeteria was a top priority for L.A....

I was so fed up yesterday after hearing that Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants have been working with Michelle Obama on her "Let's Move" childhood obesity campaign and have decided to no longer offer french fries with children's meal menu items. I mere told them that I didn't appreciate their attempt to usurp my role as a parent, my children should be able to order fries on a night out at a restaurant if they would like to (because we eat nutritiously at home), and in the future my family will be eating at restaurants that honor my freedom...

They say no publicity is bad publicity, and for that Paul M. Kramer must be truly grateful. Since word of his upcoming children’s book, Maggie Goes On a Diet spread throughout the blogosphere, he has received considerable bad press.

A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama — and championed by the first lady — gives the government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom.Republicans, notably Sarah Palin, and public school organizations decry the bill as an unnecessary intrusion on a common practice often used to raise money."This could be a real train wreck for school districts," Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association said Friday, a day after the House cleared the bill. "The federal government should not be in...