Pierre Dukan is the author of The Dukan Diet, and his books have sold millions of copies around the world, thanks in no small part to being Kate Middleton’s rumored diet. Now, the author is dipping his toes into the political arena by offering advice concerning the national obesity problem.
Dukan suggested to the future president of France that students should receive higher marks for staying within a specified body mass index range.
“For those who don’t need to lose weight, it wouldn’t change anything,” said Dukan. “For the others, it would motivate them.”
Dukan says that half of the population is overweight and that this trend has doubled in the past 12 years. He seems to think that targeting students under the age of 18 is one way to curb this problem. Read Full Post >
Matt Lauer walked the Today’s Professionals right in to a heated debate about childhood obesity this morning. A newad campaign from Georgia is trying to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity in its state, where Lauer cited one million children are overweight or obese.
The three panelists who make up the Today’s Professionals include former advertising star Donny Deutsch, Star Jones who underwent bariatric surgery, and Dr. Nancy Synderman, Chief Medical Editor for NBC News. They are uniquely qualified to have an educated debate on whether or not the controversial ads will influence any sort of change at all, if they are offensive, or hit the nail on the head.
In this clip from Today Show you can see a sample of one of the television commercials currently running in Georgia. In this spot, a young, and overweight, elementary-aged girl looks plainly in to the camera and says “I don’t like going to school because other kids pick on me. It hurts my feelings.”
Recently, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta launched an aggressive ad campaign targeted squarely at Georgia’s staggering childhood obesity epidemic. The ad campaign uses stark imagery and emotional messaging to reach the parents of the growing group of obese children. While critics blast the ads, the reoccurring sentiment is that while these ads use a more dramatic approach, these are the issues that need to be dealt with.
The ads show young, sad, overweight children with a warning label below them featuring messages like “My fat may be funny to you, but it’s killing me.” The public’s response has been mixed, but one thing is clear: desperate times call for desperate measures. “They are in your face,” said Gayla Prestage Grubbs, mother of an overweight 15-year old struggling with weight related issues. “But I know, for me, I was not offended by it. I was more like — oh, my gosh, that’s right.”
On twitter, the response was much the same. Taking the ad’s message one step further, @BarkingUnicorn tweeted: Another question that parents don’t want to answer: “Mom, why am I fat?”
Childhood obesity has been a mainstay in the national media over the past year but was brought to a head in October when a 200 pound – year old Cleveland boy was removed from his home and mother. “This child’s problem was so severe that we had to take custody,” said Mary Louise Madigan of the county’s Department of Children and Family Services.
NBC’s John Yang reports on a more recent case in Chicago, one that potentially will decide the parental custody of a child. Conan Angus, going through a divorce, has brought up the fact that his children are healthier when under his care. Mr Angus points to his soon to be ex-wife’s poor nutritional choices for their children’s meals.
The incidents in Cleveland and Chicago are hardly isolated leading journalists and reporters to wear out the now 3-year old CDC statements on the issue:
PepsiCo spent $750,000 in lobbying last quarter, which comes to $3 million per year. This amount is small change to a company with $57.8 billion in global sales, but the news highlights the company’s bipolar relationship to consumer health.
Companies are required to disclose their lobbying activities with the Clerk of the House of Representatives and with the Secretary of the Senate. According to PepsiCo’s lobbying report, the company was generally interested in policies concerning childhood obesity and food and beverage labeling. In terms of specific legislation, PepsiCo opposed guidelines being created by the Interagency Working Group on Food Market to Children (IWG), which would limit the way unhealthy foods could be marketed to children. The company has also fought hard to keep soda from being excluded from nutrition assistance programs, such as food stamp programs.
Although PepsiCo has made a number of changes to improve the public conception of how healthy their products are, the money invested in this kind of lobbying betrays these efforts as little more than token concessions to Americans’ increased interest in healthy eating.
