Obesity Pandemic???

Chicken Virus: did I hear that right. I coud not believe it so I did my own search and low and behold there are tests. It must be easier to identify than H5N1 

Asked by members of Congress to identify the "strategies and elements" likely to contribute to success in addressing childhood obesity, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released November 7 that experts from a number of fields identified "increasing physical activity" as the single most important strategy, followed by use of evidence-based "best practice" models. Improving nutrition choices and eating habits came in third in the expert opinions.

In a response to the report, the Department of Health and Human Services called the GAO’s findings inconsistent with an Institute of Medicine paper issued earlier this year that said preventing obesity involves both regular physical activity and improved eating behaviors. The GAO stood by its findings, noting that while the experts rated physical activity highly, they also pointed out that it’s not the sole strategy for preventing obesity. "Both physical activity and nutritional strategies are important," the GAO said.

In the GAO survey, 233 experts in physical activity, nutrition, and childhood obesity were given the option of identifying the strategy they thought most likely to succeed in curbing childhood obesity and they were also asked to cite promising "other" possibilities for action. While most respondents identified increasing physical activity as a priority, there were also many suggestions in the "other" category, the GAO noted, including reducing the availability of high-sugar and other non-nutritional beverages and snacks on school property.

In the nutrition category, respondents noted a variety of possible improvements including;

• No longer involving food in school-sponsored events;
• Vending machines that dispense milk instead of sweetened beverages;
• Salad bars as a daily lunch option;
• Educating food staff on good nutrition; and
• Increasing use of fresh fruits and vegetables. (Respondents noted that preparation of these foods is labor-intensive and requires a kitchen in every school.)

Many respondents expressed concern about the federal school lunch and breakfast programs, saying children are being "offered unhealthy food in the school environment."

The respondents also offered examples of strategies schools have employed to increase physical activity, including an initiative that gives children hole-punched cards to record walking during recess, with the cards redeemable for small rewards such as colorful pencils. One school provided incentives such as wristbands, water bottles, and jump ropes to encourage children to walk at least five miles a week; and another gave pedometers to children and adults to encourage walking. Commenters acknowledged that existing infrastructures—such as a lack of bicycle racks at schools, lack of sidewalks in communities, heavy traffic, and unsafe neighborhoods—may present challenges to increasing physical activity.

Selling Snack Food and Promoting Exercise

Multinational corporations that sell snack foods and beverages are also weighing in on the exercise/nutrition issue, possibly hoping to avoid the problems that have plagued the tobacco industry, where lawsuits charging cigarette manufacturers with responsibility for smoking-related illness have been costly for the industry in recent years.

The Coca Cola company, for example, expects to have a $4 million Live It program, which provides funds to buy pedometers, in 8,500 middle schools by the end of this year; General Mills is making $2 million a year in grants to schools and community groups for nutrition and fitness programs; Kraft gave $2.9 million in similar grants in 2005 and expects to spend $3.6 million next year; and PepsiCo Inc. is funding playgrounds as part of a campaign to promote exercise. "It’s all about moving more, helping kids move more," said Brock Leach, PepsiCo’s chief innovation officer.

Critics charge that those programs, and messages now appearing on cereal and snack food packages encouraging exercise, are intended to make it possible for the companies to continue to sell low-nutrition foods to children while avoiding responsibility for obesity and weight gain and avoiding possible government oversight of their businesses.

The School Food Program

As schools are asked to provide more physical education and opportunities for exercise during the day and at recess, in order to reduce overweight and obesity, questions are arising about a major source of the foods children eat at school. The federal National School Lunch program was created many decades ago to improve the nutrition of a population that had been found to be undernourished, and also to provide an outlet for commodities the government wants to remove from the marketplace in order to keep prices stable.

Those objectives may have led to rules for the school food program that lean too heavily on calorie density and too little on foods that might reduce weight, critics point out, problems that are exacerbated by loss of kitchens in many schools and reliance on central food processing facilities, which make it difficult to serve the fresh fruits and vegetables often recommended for weight control.

Added to those possible problems, the critics note, is the growing tendency of schools to offer foods outside the traditional lunch program, in ala carte lines or vending machines, with the offerings often fast-foods of poor nutritional value.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM), the science advisor to the federal government, will hear presentations December 5 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, on "Approaches to Nutrition Standards for Foods in Schools," as part of an ongoing IOM examination of childhood obesity.

The GAO report, "Childhood Obesity: Most Experts Identified Physical Activity and the Use of Best Practices as Key to Successful Programs," is available online at http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-06-127R.

See also Keeping Kids Healthy: Overweight, Nutrition & Physical Exercise at http://www.healthinschools.org/sh/obesity.asp and Childhood Overweight: What the Research Tells Us at http://www.healthinschools.org/sh/obesityfs.asp.

Hope the milk being dispensed is skim......

1 8 oz cup of whole milk: 150 calories; total fat, 8g; cholesterol= 35mg;total carbs=12g; sugar=12g; protein=8g.

Anharra, I noticed there are several other people on this forum who homeschool. I feel comfortable knowing that if something happens I don't have to go pick up my kids...they are already with me:O) I really enjoy it. They are only 4 and 7 and it amazes me how much they learn without me lecturing them too:O) They WANT to learn. I just love it.

See in it's entirety here....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZUS

The United States suspends ANZUS obligations to New Zealand

After consultations with Australia and after negotiations with New Zealand broke down, the United States announced that it was suspending its treaty obligations to New Zealand until United States Navy ships were re-admitted to New Zealand ports, citing that New Zealand was "a friend, but not an ally". The crisis made front-page headlines for weeks in many American newspapers, while many American cabinet members were quoted as expressing a deep sense of "betrayal". It is still often incorrectly stated that David Lange withdrew New Zealand from ANZUS — he had however done no such thing; his government's policy led to the US's decision to suspend its treaty obligations to New Zealand.

While the crisis with navy visits was prominent, the United States proved to be more forgiving of Australia's refusal to assist with the Peacekeeper missile. Fearing the total collapse of the ANZUS treaty, the US government decided to accommodate Australian domestic politics, particularly after NATO countries and other allies such as Japan showed little interest in taking a similar stance against nuclear weapons such as the Pershing missile.

I didn’t mean to have driven this off-topic...but Moo's comment struck me as a little odd and I was trying to clarify. 

Moolooman – sorry to have questioned you, but when people make comments like you did you have to expect some cynicism and skepticism and to be asked for more details. Nothing personal – I’m just trying to better understand

Mieke – I don’t think anyone was taking the thread off-topic.  Some issues/questions came up and were being addressed. I suppose I could have started a new thread calling out Mooloomen – but that really didn’t seem appropriate. Personally, I really enjoy how threads ebb and flow. When a threads been around for some time and has a lot of replies, it seems only natural that issues will come up and be addressed.

So - to bring us back on topic -   - I think there are multiple reasons for the obesity problem: too little exercise (that's my problem), too much fast food and processed food, and my personal scapgoat- High Fructose Corn Syrup!  This stuff is in practically everything.  Whatever happened to good old sugar and natural sweeteners??