Today marks the first anniversary of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to fight childhood obesity. Let’s Move is a public health initiative she launched last February with the goal of ending the obesity epidemic within a generation.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to join a phone call with the First Lady as she and surgeon general Regina Benjamin spoke to the medical community about Let’s Move’s first year, the impact it has had, and goals for the future.

I heard some facts that I already knew, like that childhood obesity has more than tripled since the 1980s, and now one in three American kids is overweight or obese (40 percent of African American and Hispanic children).

And some facts I didn’t know: According to the Dr. Benjamin, a recent study showed that as early as three years old, kids who are overweight show an inflammatory response linked to heart disease later in life.

As Michelle Obama talked, I couldn’t help notice how little she resembled the nanny-state food-police some complain about. Here’s what she sounded like to me and what Let’s Move has accomplished so far:  Continue reading »

After being held up yesterday by House Republicans who objected to increasing the amount spent on school lunches by SIX CENTS, the first legislation expanding school lunch programs in thirty years was voted into law yesterday.  President Obama is expected to sign it quickly.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the new law would make 115,000 more children eligible for free or subsidized school lunches. It also provides an additional 29 million meals a year at after-school programs. In addition to increasing the budget for lunches, requiring more fruits and vegetable and whole grains, the bill eliminates junk food sold “a la carte or in vending machines,” and encourages schools to buy local food and plant school gardens. The bill was part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to fight childhood obesity and she called its passage an “overwhelming” victory.  Of course, Sarah Palin will probably start a food fight over it.

Some, and not just the big mama grizzly, fault the bill as being too restrictive because it eliminates not only junk food sold regularly in school, but also limits school fundraisers.  According to ABC, Alexa Marrero, spokeswoman for House Education and Labor committee Republicans is quoted as saying, the new rules “wouldn’t just apply to school meals but things like bake sales that are also used as fundraisers, or concessions sold at sporting events.”

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It’s almost Thanksgiving. No school! Kids are excited! Parents, maybe not so much, but not for the usual reasons of wondering how we’ll fill the time.  For millions of parents, kids at home means kids to feed and with a continuing recession and rising food prices, that’s not always easy.

According to the US Agriculture department, in 2009, 50 million households, that’s 15 percent of all families in the US, were food insecure. In other words, those households weren’t sure if they’d have enough money for food or flat out couldn’t buy enough to feed their families.  Continue reading »

Packing school lunches yet?  If not, you will be soon.  Baby carrots have been a lunchtime staple for years now, but if your kids have resisted eating them, you’re in luck.  In a bit of marketing genius, the baby carrot industry has taken “a page out of junk food’s playbook” and designed a serving-size bag that is sure to make the healthy snack more appealing to your picky eaters.

USA Today reports that Bolthouse Farms ”and nearly 50 other carrot growers” have revealed the new bags that will be used industry-wide, mocking popular potato chip and junk food brands.  The marketing effort carries a 25 million dollar price tag, but one look at the clever designs should tell you, it may be worth the cost. Continue reading »

Various theories have been proposed to explain why the childhood obesity epidemic: kids spend too little time outside and too much time watching TV; kids eat too much fast food; families don’t eat dinner together any more and rely too much on processed foods. But today I heard the most surprising explanation: school lunches are partially to blame for our nation’s overweight kids.

New research funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA.) found that children who eat school lunches through the government’s National School Lunch Program are more likely to become overweight, according to economist Daniel L. Millimet at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Continue reading »

There are one or two minor things I don’t like about this parenting gig. The early rising, for example. The midnight sheet-changing. The diapers weren’t my favorite (past that!) and the Sisyphean dishwasher and laundry moments do get me down. But there is one thing, one single thing, one thing that’s somehow fallen to me in our house (all of those other things were or are shared tasks) that really pushes my buttons. One thing that looms over my head as we roll lazily into August. One nearly nightly chore that I dread more than any other, one thing I haven’t figured out how to make easier or pawn off on my children, one loathsome task.

And it’s coming right back at me this September. Continue reading »

Spam for a better school lunch?

No, not that spam. We’re talking about the electronic kind. You know . . .the solicitations for credit cards, the pleas to help out financially troubled Nigerians, and all the rest of the ridiculous ads and scams that fill up our in-boxes on a daily basis.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is asking that you forward your spam to them as part of their “No Junk” movement. That’s junk as in what’s served in American public school cafeterias. Continue reading »