Tag Archives: childhood obesity

Jillian Michaels Announces Return to Biggest Loser With a Big Twist [VIDEO]

Jillian Michaels appeared on the TODAY Show this morning to make a big announcement concerning her relationship with America’s favorite weight loss show, The Biggest Loser. The top trainer was excited to share that she will be returning to the show for the next season in January, but the contestants won’t be who you may suspect.

“The show has chosen to take on something very controversial,” Michaels told TODAY. “They’re going to go after childhood obesity.”

At what seems the height of our nation’s childhood obesity epidemic, perhaps the most recognized weight loss show ever has decided to step in and help battle the bulge. Michaels explained that there will be three teens on each team ages 13-17, however, unlike the original show’s format they’re not going to be on the ranch and they won’t be competing.

Because weight loss for children can be a touchy subject and Michaels is not the most delicate of trainers, some are concerned that the show may end up taking the issue too far. But Michaels assured that it’s something she and the show’s producers recognize needs to be handled with care. The bottom line is, she stressed, childhood obesity needs to be addressed.

To ensure they’re approaching childhood weight loss professionally, sensitively and effectively, the Biggest Loser has reportedly already consulted experts and child psychologists to equip the trainers to coach the children in positive and healthy ways. Instead of focusing on a number, they’ll be equipping the teens with healthy habits that will last them a lifetime. (more…)

Posted on September 4, 2023 by Dana

Eating Disorders Among Youth on the Rise, Parents Must Intervene

“I started not eating breakfast. And I remember one day I brought Greek fat free yogurt to lunch and I only ate strawberries. I started cutting back, and I guess I was cutting back a lot more.”

These are the words of Jessica (whose name has been changed to protect her identity), a now 13-year-old girl who suffered from an eating disorder for more than a year before admitting she needed help.

This is just one instance of an alarming new trend that surfaced regarding eating disorders among children. According to new study from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, cases are on the rise. An article from CNN reported that findings show hospitalizations for eating disorders in children under the age of 12 have increased by 119 percent between 1999 and 2006.

Just a few of the effects of eating disorders include extreme weight loss, low energy levels, low iron counts, and hair loss. These are signs more and more dietitians are seeing in children coming into their offices.

An issue that has remained largely in the dark displays how problematic a person’s relationship with food can be at any age. An eating disorder can start any number of ways. For Jessica, it was when she stepped on her parents’ scale and thought the number was high. That moment sparked a heightened awareness of her weight. And that awareness, coupled with bullies in her class calling her fat, led her to start severely restricting what she ate in an effort to get thin. (more…)

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Dana

“To Get Kids Healthy, Let Them Lead the Conversation” Michelle Obama Tells The View

Michelle Obama appeared on “The View” Tuesday to discuss a number of important issues regarding our nation’s health. From gardening to nutrition in schools to how she hopes the Let’s Move campaign will paint a better tomorrow for our nation, the first lady opened up about how she created a healthy environment for her own family and how she hopes to empower other families to do the same.

Here are our top five takeaways from her time on “The View.”

You can garden anywhere. If you don’t know by now that the first lady loves gardening, you’ve been living under a rock. In her book “American Grown,” Mrs. Obama shares about her experience in planting a full-scale garden in the White House lawn, and how it’s helped she and her family not only eat healthier, but more fully appreciate whole foods.

By maintaining her own garden, Mrs. Obama became an advocate for gardening everywhere – in schools, at home, in communities – and hopes to educate Americans about the importance of planting and growing their own food, knowing where their meals comes from, and how doing so can play a key role in improving our nation’s health. (more…)

Posted on August 16, 2023 by Dana

School Food Laws May be Reducing Children’s Weight, Study Finds

When it comes to childhood obesity in the U.S., we obviously have a problem. An estimated one in three American kids and teens is obese, according to the American Heart Association. And as a result, weight-related diseases like Type 2 diabetes are on the rise in children, which leaves health experts scrambling for ways to reverse this alarming trend.

But thanks to various food laws put in place in some schools, we may be making some healthy progress.

According to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, strict laws that curb the sales of junk food and sugary drinks in schools may be reducing children’s BMIs and slowing overall weight gain.

To conduct the study, researchers analyzed 6,300 students in 40 states, first measuring their heights and weights when they were fifth graders in 2004, and again when they were eighth graders in 2024. Over the same lapse of time, researchers also examined the databases of several state laws concerning nutrition in these schools.

Among the schools examined, there were a range of laws in place to govern the food and drinks being sold either in vending machines or school stores outside of designated meal times. These laws included restrictions on the sugar and fat contents of food and beverages, and the severity of these laws ranged from district to district. (more…)

Posted on August 13, 2023 by Dana

Sugary Drinks Still Widely Available in Schools

It seems for every stride forward we make in improving our children’s diets, we manage to take one step back as well.

It’s been wonderful seeing a decline in the availability of soda in our schools. It has no place there and offers no nutritional value to students anyways. However, while sodas are on the decline, children still have easy access to other high-calorie, sugary beverages, which often do just as much damage as that bottle of Pepsi or Coke.

The number of students that can buy soda at school has dropped by nearly 50 percent since 2006. But according to July’s issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, one-third of U.S. elementary students can still buy sugary drinks.

As reported by Reuters earlier this week, findings from a University of Michigan study determined that sports drinks were the most common sugary drinks found in middle schools and high schools.

So it seems our youngest students are still being offered some sort of juice drinks and the upper level students are being offered sports drinks, all of which are very high in calories and loaded with sugar. The juice drinks serve very little purpose in a person’s diet, especially if they’re not 100 percent juice. In addition, sports drinks are not recommended for anyone unless they are doing intense exercise. (more…)

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Lacy

State of School Lunches: How MyPlate Will Start Making a Difference This Year

By Rachel Berman RD, Director of Nutrition at CalorieCount.com

Last month, the USDA celebrated its one year anniversary of releasing MyPlate to replace the decades-old food guide pyramid in order to help Americans make healthier choices at mealtime. In case you haven’t seen it yet, MyPlate is a visual representation of what your plate should look like, sectioned off with 50% attributed for fruits and vegetables, 30% grains, 20% protein and a smaller circle next to the plate representing dairy. But is the government implementing this nutrition guide focusing on balance when it comes to the National School lunch program? With more than one-third of the nation’s children and adolescents being obese and students taking in about 20-50% of their daily food at school during the school year, is the math adding up to more nutritious school lunches?

This year, the USDA is requiring a revamp of school lunches due to first lady Michelle Obama’s initiative and as a component of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act signed by the president. Beginning July 1, 2024, new school lunch and general nutrition standards started rolling out and will continue for the next five years. The main changes, which are in line with MyPlate recommendations, include ensuring:

  • Kids are offered fruits and veggies every day
  • Offered more whole grains
  • Only low fat or fat free milk
  • Monitored calorie counts based on age to limit portions (more…)
Posted on August 7, 2023 by Calorie_Count

Sleep Over Homework for Better Health and Academic Performance

Not only does too much homework negatively affect students’ test scores, but new research suggests that even an hour or two of homework each night gives no measurable advantages to students before they enter grades 10 through 12. Sydney University’s Richard Walker headed up the study outlined in his new book “Reforming Homework: Practices, Learning and Policies.”

According to the study, students in elementary school get limited benefits from homework, while middle schoolers get slightly more. It’s not until high school that academic performance becomes enhanced with homework. Even then, too much homework can lead to poor mental and physical health. A lack of sleep is one cause of this, with one study linking sleep deficiencies in teens to obesity. A lack of sleep can also lead to diabetes, another study found. (more…)

Posted on July 31, 2023 by SarahS

Children in China More Likely to get Diabetes than Children in America

Teenagers in China are four times as likely to get diabetes than those from the United States. This was discovered by a study led by Barry Popkin, Ph.D., W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition at University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The researchers used data from the longest ongoing study of its kind in China, China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). They analyzed data from over 29,000 people that were followed from 1989 to 2024 in 300 different communities in China.

While comparing data from the CHNS to the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) in the United States the researchers found the rates of diabetes were higher in the youth from China. Children aged 12-18 from China had a 1.9 percent compared to 0.5 percent of American children who had diabetes. They also found that 11 percent of Chinese children and 30 percent of Chinese adults are currently overweight.

“Those who are Asian, Native American, African American have more thrifty genes and are more likely to store fat. These populations come from ancestry that experienced bouts of famine and needed to store extra fat to survive,” said Sarah Kahn, Resident Pharmacist with Dietsinreview.com, in an email. “Fat around the abdomen is an indicator that could lead to diabetes.” (more…)

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Kristina

Push for Healthier School Lunches in Your City with the Help of Guiding Stars

Dietitian Allison J. Stowell and chef Erin Dow offered a webinar to those who were interested in Guiding Stars changing school lunches. Allison and Erin noted the rising obesity rates among children and how a change is needed as soon as possible. The issue at hand is childhood obesity and how changing school lunches can help lower obesity. The webinar basically described steps that Allison and Erin took to change a school district’s meal plan. The team offered advise to those who would like to implement healthy meals at schools in their home towns.

Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2024 will take effect July 2024. Congress passed the act to help children grow into healthy adults. Guiding Star wants to educate children, parents, staff, and administrators about the importance of healthy eating, and they want people from the community to gather credible research about children eating healthy at schools and summarize it to the school board or community members. With that support and information, they can get everyone on board for the cause. The next step is to find a chef who is willing to work with the school and help create healthy recipes for the kids. Finally, schools need to enlist the help of staff and teachers to encourage and educate kids on the importance of eating healthy. (more…)

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Samantha

Obese Children Perform Worse in School, Studies Show

Here is what we know about children and proper nutrition so far in our age of advanced health.

  • A proper breakfast helps them focus at school.
  • A balanced diet encourages healthy growth and normal weight.
  • Feeding them junk food, especially processed, high-fat and high-sugar foods, will cause them to develop a palette for unhealthy foods.

A new fact to add to this list? Obesity can cause kids to perform worse at school. At least that’s what new research is proposing.

Recent studies have shown that obese children tend to have lower test scores than their peers, and that obese girls score even lower than boys. In addition to poor test scores, obese children are also more likely to be held back in school, and are less likely to attend college. (more…)

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Dana

Disney’s Ban on Junk Food Ads is a Game Changer. Can Other Networks Keep Up?

By Abra Pappa

The landscape of morning cartoons is about to look a lot different, as they will no longer be aligned with ad campaigns for sugary cereals, fast food, or candy. At least on stations owned by Disney. In an announcement made last week the Walt Disney Co will ban junk food advertising on its television channels, radio stations and websites by 2024.

A step in the right direction? Absolutely. Disney is the first company to choose to self-regulate where government standards have failed to exist.

One-third of our nation’s children are obese and the numbers keep rising. Many experts believe that media and marketing influence is contributing to the problem.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has been a long time advocate for restricting junk food marketing for children, commended Disney for taking these steps and called on other networks to follow suit.

“Disney’s announcement is welcome news to parents and health experts concerned about childhood obesity and nutrition,” Wootan said. “This puts Disney ahead of the pack of media outlets and should be a wake-up call to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network to do the same. As a nation, all companies should be working toward promoting only healthy food through all forms of child-directed media.” (more…)

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Nutritious_America