Free Republic

Childhood Obesity Report Calls For Government Regulations to Limit Access to ‘Unhealthy’ Restaurant Chains Wednesday, September 02, 2009 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) - A newly released report by the Institute for Medicine and the National Research Council details strategies for local governments to combat what it calls an epidemic of childhood obesity, including enacting zoning and land-use regulations that would “restrict fast food establishments near school grounds and public playgrounds.” The report, “Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity,” was compiled by the Committee on Childhood Obesity Prevention Actions for Local Governments, a committee of health care...

Childhood Obesity Report Calls For Government Regulations to Limit Access to ‘Unhealthy’ Restaurant Chains Wednesday, September 02, 2009 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) - A newly released report by the Institute for Medicine and the National Research Council details strategies for local governments to combat what it calls an epidemic of childhood obesity, including enacting zoning and land-use regulations that would “restrict fast food establishments near school grounds and public playgrounds.” The report, “Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity,” was compiled by the Committee on Childhood Obesity Prevention Actions for Local Governments, a committee of health care...

ST. LOUIS (KWMU) - The death of an overweight eighth-grader during football practice has revived the debate over testing of children's hearts before they engage in sports or other strenuous activity. Anthony Troupe Jr. collapsed last week on a suburban St. Louis football field. The 13-year-old known as "Big Ant" for his 6-foot-2-inch, 383-pound body was pronounced dead at a local hospital an hour later. The cause of death won't be available for several weeks pending test results. But the boy's weight, heart and family history are suspect. Anthony's father collapsed and died two years ago at age 45 from...

It’s a spectacular day at Harmony Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with children swinging and running through sprinklers. An “icy man” with his pushcart of fruit ices stands near the jungle gym, as parents look toward the gated entrance. A second ices vendor enters, also setting up shop inside the playground’s cast-iron fence. Vicki Sell, mother of 3-year-old Katherine, tenses when the vendor starts ringing his little bell, over and over, hoping her daughter doesn’t have the typical Pavlovian response. Ever since Katherine had an inconsolable meltdown about not being able to have a treat, Ms. Sell has been trying...

Childhood obesity could be linked to the weight problems of parents in a gender-specific way, research in the EarlyBird Diabetes study has suggested. Girls whose mothers were clinically obese and boys whose fathers had the same condition were more likely to follow suit at a young age, according to a study. Researchers from the EarlyBird Diabetes Study found the trend did not exist between mothers and sons and fathers and their daughters. This suggests behavioural rather than genetic factors could hold the key to finding out why so many British children are obese, scientists claimed. The EarlyBird Study, based at...

So where's the fat? Mother sent warning letter as health police say son is just 1lb overweight By JULIE MOULT 14th May 2009 Michala Forder and Zac show the NHS letter that branded him fat Zac Forder is a lively and active child of five, weighing 3st 5lb. Unfortunately that' s a pound over the recommended guidelines - meaning he's been labelled overweight by health workers. It also means that his mother Michala received a letter warning that her son could be at risk of developing cancer, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure in later life. The letter follows...

April 8) -- A Massachusetts health board has voted to have public schools weigh students and include their body mass index, a measurement used to screen for obesity, on their report cards. Massachusetts students in first, fourth, seventh and 10th grades will be weighed and the results sent home, according to The Boston Globe. The measure follows similar efforts from Wyoming to New York City. The goal is to alert parents to a potential childhood health problem and encourage parents of overweight children to seek help for their kids. The vote comes just days after news that a national report...

Bill Clinton counts calories FNC's Greta van Susteren is on a roll lately. First she interviewed Bristol Palin and Sarah Palin ... and now Bill Clinton — it's airing tonight on "On the Record." She interviewed Clinton in his Harlem office this afternoon and talked stimulus and Hillary's singing, and about Clinton's just-announced initiative to fight childhood obesity, which dovetails with his own experience as a chubby kid. (What he does to stay fit and trim? He counts calories.) He's happy Hillary Clinton is in Indonesia: "It's the biggest Muslim country in the world, full of promise. I invested a...

Sixty one percent of the kids at Watsoville High (Watsonville, California) are eligible for free breakfast or lunch provided by the taxpayers but instead head off for the local convenience store or fast food joint. Still it's all our fault that they are fat. Watsonville faces a growing number of overweight children By JONDI GUMZ Posted: 02/08/2009 01:30:41 AM PST WATSONVILLE -- Too often, children in Watsonville are eating food that is not good for them, and it shows. About 31 percent of Watsonville's children are obese by age 8, and another 23 percent are overweight, a study for the...

All the safety measures we have taken to protect our children have produced such harmful effects as increasing the rate of childhood obesity; in fact, one in six children in America is obese, and many of them face a lifetime of chronic illness, says the Center for Disease Control. However, the situation could cure itself if children would just get off the sofa! But how do we lure children outside? One key attraction is risk, says Philip Howard, chairman of Common Good. Risk is fun, he continues, at least the moderate risks that were common in prior generations. Today, America...

Belated, Patchy Response Further Hamstrung By Inadequate Federal Attention, Experts Say The problem at first was that the problem was ignored: For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter -- ate more, sat more -- and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government. But since the alarm was finally sounded in the late 1990s, the problem has been the country's reaction: a fragmented, inchoate response that critics say has suffered particularly from inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level. "The sense of this as a national...

An epidemic of obesity is compromising the lives of millions of American children, with burgeoning problems that reveal how much more vulnerable young bodies are to the toxic effects of fat. In ways only beginning to be understood, being overweight at a young age appears to be far more destructive to well-being than adding excess pounds later in life. Virtually every major organ is at risk. The greater damage is probably irreversible. Doctors are seeing confirmation of this daily: boys and girls in elementary school suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of...

A Democratic lawmaker in New Mexico wants to tax televisions and video games to raise funds to fight childhood obesity and improve education in the state, officials said Friday. "I have asked our legislative council service to prepare the "Leave No Child Inside" bill and am hopeful that it will be ready for me to introduce on Monday," educator-turned-lawmaker Gail Chasey told AFP. "Leave No Child Inside" -- a play on the federal education initiative "No Child Left Behind" -- is backed by grassroots environmental group, the Sierra Club. "The bill proposes levying a one-percent excise tax on the purchase...

WASHINGTON - Too little milk, sunshine and exercise: It's an anti-bone trifecta. And for some kids, shockingly, it's leading to rickets, the soft-bone scourge of the 19th century. But cases of full-blown rickets are just the red flag: Bone specialists say possibly millions of seemingly healthy children aren't building as much strong bone as they should — a gap that may leave them more vulnerable to bone-cracking osteoporosis later in life than their grandparents are. "This potentially is a time-bomb," says Dr. Laura Tosi, bone health chief at Children's National Medical Center in Washington. Now scientists are taking the first...

Parents of 5-year-olds are to be sent official warning letters if their child is found to be obese, as part of a national programme to weigh children in schools. Ministers are bracing themselves for charges that they will stigmatise fat children when they publish proposals next month to tackle rising levels of obesity, The Times has learnt. Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, is understood to have been persuaded that it is in children’s best interest if their weight is brought formally to the attention of their parents. The routine weighing of primary school pupils was reintroduced in England and Wales...

Take obese children from parents, say doctors By Nicole Martin Last Updated: 12:57am BST 17/06/2007 Severely overweight children should be taken from their parents and put into care, doctors said yesterday as it emerged that obesity had been a factor in at least 20 child protection cases in the past year.In the most extreme cases, where parents refuse to improve diets, social services should intervene to protect children's long-term health, doctors said. A motion to be debated at the British Medical Association's annual conference this month will call for overfeeding to be considered a form of parental neglect or abuse....

SOCIAL workers are placing obese children on the child protection register alongside victims thought to be at risk of sexual or physical abuse. In extreme cases children have been placed in foster care because their parents have contributed to the health problems of their offspring by failing to respond to medical advice. The intervention of social services in what was previously regarded as a private matter is likely to raise concerns about the emergence of the “fat police”. Some doctors even advocate taking legal action against parents for illtreating their children by feeding them so much that they develop health...

Chubby Toddlers May Not Outgrow It, Study Says Most Overweight Toddlers Were Overweight At 12POSTED: 9:04 am EDT September 5, 2006 CHICAGO -- Pudgy toddlers face a good chance of becoming overweight 12-year-olds, according to government research that shoots down the notion that kids just naturally outgrow early chubbiness. Children who were overweight at age 2 or later during their preschool years faced a five times higher risk of being overweight at age 12 than youngsters who were not overweight early on, the study found. Sixty percent of the children who were overweight at any time during the preschool period...

Primary schoolchildren are to be weighed regularly and their parents told if they are too fat under a Government drive to reduce obesity. Children aged four to 10 in England will be put on the scales this term to help prepare an obesity "map". From next year, parents of any obese four- to 10-year-old can expect a letter telling them that their child faces long-term health problems unless they live a healthier life. Yesterday, the Department of Health rejected suggestions that the Government was "policing" the size of children and increasing the risk that some children could be stigmatised or...

School Soda Ban •Major Soda Brands Agree to Halt Sales to Public Schools The nation's largest beverage distributors have agreed to halt nearly all soda sales to public schools, according to a deal announced Wednesday by the William J. Clinton Foundation. Under the agreement, the companies have agreed to sell only water, unsweetened juice and low-fat milks to elementary and middle schools, said Jay Carson, a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton. Diet sodas would be sold only to high schools Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and the American Beverage Association have all signed onto the deal, Carson...