Posted by Janet Harriett on Feb.15, 2010

ⓒ iStockPhoto - morgani

Every First Lady of the United States has had a particular cause she advocated while her husband was president. Nancy Reagan fought drugs. Laura Bush promoted literacy. Last week, Michelle Obama unveiled her cause: eliminating childhood obesity.

In promoting her new initiative, catchily named “Let’s Move!” the first lady mentioned her own family’s struggle to raise fit, healthy children. The organic garden installed at the White House is getting called back into action as a demonstration of what families can do to get more healthy fruits and veggies in their lives. The main elements of the initiative are a task force to coordinate governmental action, a four-pronged outreach approach on nutrition and fitness, and a public-private partnership to encourage progress on measures that can curb childhood obesity. The question is, will these programs work?

The Task Force

The central pillar of this initiative is the Task Force on Childhood Obesity, tasked with reviewing all government programs that could affect childhood obesity rates and working out how to coordinate the efforts toward the goal of eradicating childhood obesity in a generation while using federal resources as efficiently as possible.

Overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, this task force will include representatives from HHS and the Departments of Agriculture, Education and Interior as well as the First Lady’s office and whatever other agencies are eventually deemed necessary. Green Diva Mom sees a sign of progress that this agency is under the Health and Human Service department, which includes the Office of the Surgeon General and the other governmental agencies tasked with promoting public health. This is a step in the right direction, away from having the nation’s nutrition recommendations administered by the Department of Agriculture, which is generally tasked with promoting the interests of food producers rather than the health of food consumers.

The task force is the action arm of the initiative. The philosophical base of the new initiative are grounded in four principles: empowering parents to make healthy choices, putting healthier food in schools, enabling access to healthy and affordable foods, and promoting physical activity.

Healthy Choices

The first cornerstone of the initiative is clear, educated parental involvement in childhood health. Specific elements of this section call for more prominent food labeling, better information through pediatricians on child health and weight issues, and tools to inform parents and promote family-level changes.

If the involvement of the American Academy of Pediatrics leads pediatricians to be more up front with parents about developing problems with overweight and obesity in their children, that can only benefit the rates of childhood obesity. Preventing a problem or nipping it in the bud can head off a lifelong struggle with overweight.

Given the previous failings of the Food Pyramid, most notably that it’s designed by the agency most sensitive to producer lobbies, therefore the one least likely to say we need to eat less of anything, we are wary of any progress that might be had on the “Next Generation Food Pyramid.” The last time the Department of Agriculture revamped the food pyramid, they managed to turn it on its side and require Internet access to understand the color-coded charts. We do hope they manage to do better this time around.

The Food Atlas is an interesting tool to play with and one of the first put up on www.letsmove.gov. I had no idea that 128 farms in my county have direct-to-consumer sales or that I enjoy a reasonably low price difference between green leafy veggies and starchy veggies, and I wouldn’t have guessed that 65% of the adult population in my county met the physical activity recommendations. This particular tool has potential applications for academics and overall policy, but doesn’t look like the most useful tool for planning at the individual family level, unless it prompts parents to look for the farmer’s markets and direct farm-to-consumer sales reported in the Atlas.

Some of the other tools already up on the site are promising, though not entirely without flaw. A grocery list template divides lines into “Go” and “Slow” foods, opening up potential for causing some confusion with the Slow Food Movement, which seeks to emphasize whole foods and home preparation, which are the kind of foods intended for the “Go” lines on the list.

Surely, not all of the tools provided will be useful, but some will and the more ammunition we can give to parents as the ones with the primary responsibility for their children’s health, the better the overall chances of success.

Healthier Food in Schools

This cornerstone of the initiative against childhood obesity focuses on the food children eat that parents have little control over, but the government does in the form of the National School Lunch Program. Through this avenue, the initiative provides schools and districts with tools and incentives for healthier school lunches and breakfasts.

The 5-year timeline for decreasing sugar, fat and salt in school lunches, and the 10-year period for increasing whole grains and produce, seem a bit lax. Today’s second graders could be graduated before the weenies get wrapped in whole wheat. Still, any attention paid to improving school lunches, including parental involvement in insisting on healthier options, patches a hole in parental control over their children’s nutrition. We hope that the discussion of healthy school lunches doesn’t stop with the National School Lunch Program, and gets extended to vending machines, candy-based fundraisers and off-program cafeteria food sales.

Accessing Healthy, Affordable Food

For many parents, the problem isn’t so much a lack of knowledge as it is a lack of resources. Many neighborhoods where obesity is particularly endemic lack a market that sells fresh produce. In these “food deserts,” prepackaged, fast and convenience foods are the only accessible option. The statement announcing the Let’s Move! initiative calls for a partnership between private enterprise and public funding to promote development of healthy food markets in underserved areas. This includes expanding farmer’s markets, though the $5 million investment cited in the statement seems, to us, to be well short of what would be needed unless there is some serious private sector involvement. Confusion over how other government initiatives on food safety will affect farmer’s markets and direct farmer-to-consumer sales is not likely to make this any easier.

Bringing healthy food choices to everyone is essential for child and adult obesity prevention. It doesn’t matter if a person knows what they should eat and what they should feed their child if they’re unable to procure it.

Physical Activity

As Marion Nestle noted, the initiative is “called the uncontroversial “Let’s Move,” not the inflammatory ‘Let’s Eat Less’ or ‘Let’s Eat Better,’” attributing the choice of name to political reality, namely that couch potatoism doesn’t have the political clout of large-scale agricultural lobbies. The initiative has drawn participation from major sports figures and 12 professional sports leagues.

Whether borne of political expediency and fear of the corn and sugar lobbies or not, it’s good to see a wellness initiative that tackles both diet and exercise. Neither one alone works long-term to curb obesity. Starting the activity habit early makes it easier for children to carry to adulthood.

There is some humor in the very idea of a television ad campaign promoting activity. Though an ad campaign like “60 Minutes of Play a Day” may be necessary to get the word out, that would be right up there with printing “5 a Day” fruit and veggie ads on the Twinkie wrappers. On this, the real measure of progress will be how many children turn off the cartoons after seeing the ads and go toss around a real football instead of playing a marathon of Madden NFL 10.

Partnership for a Healthy America

The Let’s Move! initiative is conceived as a private-public partnership. The goals of this partnership are somewhat vague at the moment: “accelerate existing efforts addressing childhood obesity and to facilitate commitments towards the national goal of solving childhood obesity within a generation.”

Private food industry companies have wasted no time signing on to the partnership and the initiative as a whole. Though the initiative is still in its infancy, so far, the support of the food industry players seems to consist mainly of self-serving press releases showing their support. In particular, Burger King highlighted in a media release that 4 of it’s BK Kids meals meet 5-year-old dietary guidelines that allow 560 calories per meal, 30% of calories from fat and 600 milligrams of sodium, leaving out mention that their complete BK Kids menu has 8 entree items and that these guidelines are hardly a recipe for an optimal diet. We reserve judgement on the partnership until we see how the support translates into real-world actions and what the partnership manages to accomplish in concrete terms.

The Bottom Line

Parts of the Let’s Move initiative aren’t perfect, and parts will take time to show results, positively or negatively. However, the issue is one of vital public health, and needs to be addressed. On the whole, the strategy of putting parents front and center and giving them responsibility for their children’s nutrition, health and wellness, is a strategy Green Diva Mom can get behind. If the government needs to be involved, the proper place is in a role supporting the parents and facilitating good nutritional choices. The whole-body approach, integrating activity and eating on equal footing, is a welcomed change. Totally eradicating childhood obesity in a generation is a lofty goal, and one not likely to completely succeed as long as subsidies make unhealthy calories cheaper, but the problem has come to the point where even incremental improvement would be heartening.

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Posted under GDM News & Politics, Living.