Feb
12
2012
February is American Heart Month; a month to spread awareness about the importance of heart health. Each year, countless American families are impacted by heart disease and stroke. Although its risk factors can be prevented or controlled, it is still the leading cause of death for all Americans, and accounts for $1 out of every $6 dollars spent on health care. Fortunately, there are many simple steps we can take to prevent heart disease such as eating healthy foods, exercising regularly, and not smoking.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working with both public and private partners to raise awareness of heart disease through vital research investments and public health programs. The Million Hearts Initiative takes aim at this disease, with a goal of preventing 1 million heart attacks and strokes over the next 5 years. Other efforts, like the HeartTruth, which addresses women’s heart health, and the First Lady’s Let’s Move! initiative, which confronts childhood obesity by helping children choose healthy foods and stay active, work to provide people with resources and ways to make heart healthy changes in their everyday lives .
And thanks to the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, new health plans must now cover recommended preventive services, including blood pressure screening for all adults and cholesterol screening for adults of certain ages or at higher risk, cost-free.
This month, as we take time to ...
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Mar
28
2011
As you all know, my pal Nerdel and I are big supporters of the Presidents Challenge and First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move programs. The intent of both of these fantastic programs is to get all Americans, young and old, into better shape. Both programs encourage you to eat healthier meals and snacks at school, at home, at work and whenever you go out to eat! And both programs emphasize the need to perform some type of physical fitness activity each and every day. The Presidents Challenge program has many individual activity categories based on age and lifestyle and you can earn many cool awards and medals by registering your fitness performance.
Here’s a little history: On September 14th, 2010, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius along with the co-Chair of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition-Dominique Dawes and Let’s Move Executive Director Robin Schepper, launched the Million PALA (President's Active Lifestyle Award) Challenge. The goal of the Million PALA Challenge is to get 1,000,000 youth and adults, from all over the United States, to sign up and participate in the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA) over the year. The ending date is slowly approaching-September 2011.
How does the Million PALA Challenge work? “The Presidential Active Lifestyle Award, or PALA, can be earned by taking part in 60 minutes of physical activity for kids ...
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Jul
19
2010
Let’s congratulate our bipartisan representatives in the United States Congress for passing the legislation: Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act (H.R. 5504) on July 14th, 2010. We are all aware that millions of kids come to school each and every morning hungry. According to Share Our Strength (Strength.org), over 12 million kids go to sleep each night with food insecurity. And we also know that the only chance at a healthy and nutritious meal (breakfast and or lunch) for these children is at school. There have been multiple studies published that demonstrate the importance and benefit of an adequate breakfast on the learning and skills of children.
What will this legislation do? Here are the highlights:
Improve Access to School Meal Programs
Increase the number of eligible children enrolled in the school lunch programs by using Medicaid/SCHIP data to directly certify children who meet income requirements without requiring individual applications and requiring states to establish and execute a plan to increase rates of direct certification.
Provide enhanced universal meal access for eligible children in high poverty communities by eliminating paper applications and using census data to determine school wide income eligibility.
Increase children’s access to healthy school breakfasts by providing competitive grants to school districts to start up or improve their program.
Improve Access to Out of School Meal Programs
Ensure fewer children go hungry year round by providing meals ...
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Jun
12
2010
Like many of you out there, I bought the Wii (Nintendo) video game for my daughter when it came out. The tennis was cool and the boxing was an interesting challenge. I liked having the ability of physical movement and the responses that were reflected in the game. My daughter liked building the avatars and playing the music and dance games. My initial opinion, prior to playing the game, was that I didn’t think that a video game could allow me to get enough exercise and be physical enough to equal a sport or going into the gym. After all, I was use to Pac-man and old fashion pinball where there was some excitement, a little gyrating but no real physicality. But after playing all the Wii games included in the base package including baseball and bowling, I was amazed at the work out that I was getting. So as usual, I decided to do a bit of research to see if there were any actual studies that confirmed my actual findings. Drs. Mellecker and McManus of the Institute of Human Performance-University of Hong Kong, performed research on activity and video gaming in kids and reported in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, that, “active gaming media results in meaningful increases in energy expenditure and ...
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May
23
2010
My friends, I had a wonderful dream that I want to share with you:
It all started as I awakened one morning, and smelled some incredible aroma coming from the kitchen. I walked downstairs to find the table set with all sorts of colorful fresh vegetables and fruits. I saw egg whites, and hard boiled eggs. Whole grain breads and muffins were baking. Wow, what a terrific smell. My wife and kids were already sitting and eating and the topic of discussion was how to stay fit and healthy! I couldn’t believe it. But it was as real as it could be! Even the television, which is consistently tuned to either CWTV’s “America’s Top Model,” Food Channel’s “Food Challenge,” Travel Channel’s-“Andrew Zimmern,” or even TLC’s “Buddy Valastro of Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop in Hoboken, New Jersey,”-now was showing a Science Channel (Discovery) show on the Universe with Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking's Universe). Am I dreaming? I guess I was, but it was sweet! Even better was when I asked my kids how school was, and they answered that it was “great” and that they were learning about organic foods in the organic garden they had at school and they even prepared some basic recipes in the “kitchen.” I couldn’t believe my ears! Organic garden, organic foods, kitchen-which dimension had I awakened in? My daughter continued to describe the yoga and Tai Chi ...
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May
19
2010
First Lady Michelle Obama, in a press conference with members of the Food and Beverage Industry, announced that the Partnership for a Healthier America has signed an agreement with The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF) whose members are pledging to take actions aimed at reducing 1.5 trillion product calories by the end of 2015. As an interim step to this goal, HWCF will seek to reduce calories by 1 trillion in 2012.
“Solving the obesity epidemic requires far more than anything government can do alone and today’s announcement represents an important step forward to providing Americans with healthier choices so that they can choose to lead healthier lives,” said Mrs. Obama, who also serves as honorary chair of the Partnership. “This is precisely the kind of private sector commitment we need. I want to thank the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation for stepping up to the plate and I hope this encourages others to do the same.”
“On behalf of the Partnership, I am pleased to acknowledge this major first step by the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation. Pledges like this one – with targeted and achievable results that are meaningful and measurable – will help us reach our goal of curbing childhood obesity within a generation,” said Dr. James R. Gavin III, chairman of the Partnership’s board of directors.
So how will these companies do it? Here is their plan:
growing and introducing lower-calorie options
changing ...
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May
17
2010
The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity issued a report to the President on childhood obesity on May 13th, 2010 entitled: Solving The Problem Of Childhood Obesity Within A Generation. It is a summary of recommendations on how to approach the epidemic and focuses on four “priority” areas: 1. Empowering parents and caregivers; 2. Providing healthy foods in schools; 3. Improving access to healthy, affordable foods; and 4. Increasing physical activity. The goal for the Task Force is “returning to a childhood obesity rate of just 5% by 2030.” Can this be achieved? I am not so certain. Of course additional indicators such as measuring the number of children eating a healthy diet, making sure that children eat less sugar in their diet, increasing fruits and vegetables and increasing physical activity will be extremely important for the success of this plan.
The report indicates that: A. one in every three children (31.7%) ages 2-19 is overweight or obese, B. that obesity is estimated to cause 112,000 deaths per year in the United States, C. one third of all children born in the year 2000 are expected to develop diabetes and D. even more starling that the current generation may be on track to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.
Additional points from the report are the following:
Each year obese adults incur an estimated $1429 more in medical expenses than ...
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Apr
18
2010
Well, I am back my friends-after a brief but needed vacation. Actually I didn’t go anywhere. I just stayed home and paid bills, read mail, cleaned and organized my desk, went grocery shopping several times, caught up on my TIVO. You know, sometimes you just don’t have to go anywhere. It’s certainly cheaper. Anyway, I was having dinner with some friends and of course the topic of nutrition comes up. They all know what I do, so inevitably someone will start the conversation off about cholesterol, fats in the foods and childhood obesity. This time was bit different. After discussing the idea of where to begin nutrition and fitness education and deciding it was in preschool, we covered the BMI report card, the “Let’s Move” program by First Lady Michelle Obama, Jaime Oliver’s new show on ABC: “Food Revolution,” and ended with the buy an extra seat on the airlines for the obese traveler. But it didn’t end there. This discussion was more heated. Most of my friends have kids, and most of their kids are in the “okay” weight range-meaning that they are in the middle of the BMI range. Some of the kids are overweight and some are thin. And then it happened: one of my friends said that we will not get anywhere with the obesity problem unless there is government intervention. Everyone took a deep breath ...
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Mar
10
2010
Okay, stay with me on this one. School budgets are being cut. The economy stinks-let’s face it. Recovery? Where Mr. President? Maybe on Wall Street-yep the stock market seems to have rebounded. Banks are paying back our stimulus money. Great! Wall Street executives are getting fat bonuses, again. Also great! General Motors is re-upping about 600 dealers. Life is super great! What! Give me a break. Housing foreclosures are still among the highest levels in years. More single family homes and apartments are for sale. Prices are dropping. More people are giving up their homes, cars and possessions. The jobs wanted market is flooded with people looking. And now the latest misery, School Boards across the country, stretched to the max with money problems are cutting PE (Physical Education), Music and Art classes. Who needs more artists and musicians anyway? Culture-blah humbug-don’t need it. And as for PE-well that’s a no brainer-let’s have our kids keep eating and eating, consuming more and more calories and not burning anything off. What does that equal? Say it with me-More Obesity in our children! Now wait a minute! You read in The Nerdel News that First Lady Michelle Obama is targeting Childhood Obesity with her “Let’s Move” campaign. It’s a fantastic effort-getting our kids to move and exercise. And we already know that our kids are not physically active enough. But-Ahm-hello-now the ...
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Feb
19
2010
I guess by now, everyone, everywhere has heard that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle have placed childhood obesity on the top of their “to get rid of” list. I think its actually ahead of some Republican pundits. Yes, childhood obesity has finally made it to the front page headlines. All of us in the press and academic fields have known for quite a while that our children have been gaining weight at an alarming rate. The President informed us that over 30 percent of our children are either overweight and or obese. We also have known that our children are not exercising as much. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is an imbalance-more calories going in and less calories being burned up. Result: a positive weight gain. Okay-that’s means overweight. But the one item that still needs clarification is: how do I know if my child is overweight or obese? I need to know that definition. So here is a sampling of what I could find out:
Merriam-Webster-doesn’t have a definition of childhood obesity. Their definition of obesity is: a condition characterized by the excessive accumulation of fat in the body (Merriam-Webster)
Medilexicon.com-Ideal Body Weight: a weight that is believed to be maximally healthful for a person, based chiefly on height but modified by factors such as gender, age, build, and degree of muscular ...
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