Countless times my patients ask questions about picky children who refuse to eat vegetables. In a number of occasions families ask questions about the appropriate multivitamins to give to kids who eat limited amounts of fruits and vegetables.

Multivitamin supplements are often necessary when a child is sick and unable to eat but, in general, we should encourage the consumption of good food containing all the nutrients children – and adults – need to maintain health.

Children often refuse foods because they don’t like the look, smell, or texture. Frequently they just want to challenge the rules.

Parents have some opportunities to get around those moments without anguish. Since most children like spaghetti, lets prepare a spaghetti sauce with all the hidden ingredients they don’t like but need.

Ingredients for a Spaghetti Sauce Picky Eaters Will Love:

• 4 large, fresh tomatoes or 1 can of tomato puree
• ½ onion
• 1 leek
• 1 small carrot
• 2 garlic cloves
• Fresh parsley
• Oregano
• Basil
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Pinch of sugar (optional)

Preparation:

In a saucepan, heat up 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Cut the onion, garlic, leek, fresh parsley and carrot in small pieces and cook it in the oil for about 5 minutes.

Add the tomato puree or the fresh tomatoes (peeled and cut). Cook in low heat for about 30 minutes. Separate from the heat and mix, using a hand blender, until all he ingredients are forming a sauce of uniform consistency. Add the dried oregano and basil, salt and pepper and cook for additional 10 minutes. You can also add a pinch of sugar is desired.

Now we only have to cook our favorite pasta, add some cheese and pour in the sauce. Your child won’t notice the difference. Leftover sauce can be frozen for later use.

When dealing with picky eaters I encourage parents not to enter into the emotional side of the struggle. The refusal to eat certain foods has many origins and it seldom has anything to do with the food itself. Sometimes there is a secondary gain, which may be simply the attention and concern of the entire family. Eliminating the emotions surrounding the problem removes the motivation and often solves the problem of a picky eater.

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Many times I have tried to analyze why I feel more energized, lighter and healthier while on vacation in Spain. My conclusion is that, while on vacation, I am more relaxed and I have more time to be active. This time I am paying attention; I have been here for one week and the level of activity is superior to the level I have in Texas. It is not by choice, but a result in the differences in life style, local habits and lack of all the commodities we take for granted in America.

We must face it. We, in the United States, have created a very comfortable way of life that makes our work and daily activities easier, but at the same time it takes away from energy consumption. We use private transportation all the way to the entrance of the store and we get upset when we have to park far away from the door. We have drive-thru pharmacies, banks, restaurants and dry cleaners, and at home we can afford to keep the thermostat as close as possible to ideal temperature. We try very hard to avoid sweating in the summer and shivering in the winter, two body reactions to changes in temperature that expend energy and, therefore, help maintain a healthy weight.

My family here in Spain has set habits that they repeat daily, rain or shine. In the morning I must walk to town to pick up a loaf of fresh French bread and the newspaper. The walk is most pleasant and it takes barely ten minutes, but the way back home means climbing up a steep road that is hardly noticeable on the way down. Taking the car? Forget it! There is no place to park near the destination. I tried, believe me, but I ended up walking the same distance. When it rains, or if I have to make a quick stop at the grocery store, carrying the bags and the umbrella up the hill makes it even more interesting.

Food must be prepared fresh and from scratch on a daily basis. Sometimes I can get away with leftovers, but we try to prepare small amounts and we rarely have leftovers. Since we eat fish almost daily, we buy what we are going to prepare for the day, which means we must visit the market often.

Sometimes I pick up the ingredients for lunch on my way to the bakery/newspaper trip in the morning, but if the grocery list is larger we take the car to go to the store, which involves finding a parking spot, carrying bags, loading and unloading and walking several sets of stairs with bags on both hands. Nobody seems to pay attention to the amount of energy spent just to prepare meals destined to generate energy. My spoiled body noticed right away; it has been one week and I am just starting to get used to it.

Energy Intake = Energy Expenditure.

This is a very important equation we must keep in mind if we want to avoid fat accumulation. When we consume too much energy in the form of food and we don’t expend enough energy, in the form of exercise, we accumulate the excess energy in the form of body fat. As simple as that.

Countries with less incidence of obesity don’t posses information that is not available to us. They simply have habits that are maintained daily. They are also capable of going through changes in environmental temperature without touching the thermostat.

Here are some tips to gear our body towards energy consumption during the Texas summer:

• Maintain the indoor temperature no lower than 80 degrees in the summer.
• Wear lighter clothing and allow some degree of sweating to eliminate toxins.
• Take advantage of the Texas summer heat. Go for a 30-minute walk in the evening. The heat adds to the energy expenditure and the ½ hour walk outdoors is equivalent to 1-hour walk on a treadmill.
• Spend 1 hour gardening on the weekend: cutting the grass, pulling weeds, planting, watering, etc.
• Once a week, walk to a near-by destination. My favorite is walking home from work (3 miles), but I sometimes walk to HEB or to the video store.

Try this plan for just one week, drinking plenty of water before and after exercise. Then tell me how you feel. I can guaranty an increase in energy level and well being, even when, during the first few days, you are more aware of the discomfort imposed by the change in body habits.

We must create a certain degree of discomfort in order to generate energy.

Just do it.

Marta Katalenas M.D.

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Recently, a company introduced a chocolate-flavored toddler formula to the market, claiming that it would encourage picky eaters to get more of the nutrition they needed. Sounds good, right? The problem came when you took time to read the label – one of the first three ingredients in this formula was sugar! In fact, the chocolate formula had 19 grams of sugar per serving.

19 grams of sugar in one serving. One serving of a drink going into the body of a 12- to 36-month-old child.

Parents and nutritionists were outraged, and rightfully so. In light of the childhood obesity epidemic in America and around the world, the last thing that infant formula makers should be doing is creating products that help children develop a craving for sweets. We must help very young children develop healthy eating habits right from the start.

This story has a happy ending. The company has decided to pull their chocolate-flavored formula from the marketplace. It will no longer be available for sale. (Sadly, the vanilla-flavored formula, with 18 grams of sugar, will remain in stores.)

Parents have a lot of power over the companies that make children’s food. You are not helpless. You get to decide what your children put into their mouths. At least until they are old enough to start leaving the nest a bit. That’s why it’s so important to teach them proper eating habits when they’re young.

Putting Power into Practice

The Power of Your Voice

The chocolate-flavored formula story is a terrific example of the power of parents speaking up. Make your thoughts known. When the chocolate-flavored formula was introduced to the market, influential bloggers shared their thoughts online, most notably Marion Nestle, a professor at NYU and the nutrition expert who writes a popular blog about food politics. (An ironic name for a woman speaking out against chocolate.)

Regular moms and dads took up the fight, and you know the rest. You, too, can write letters and emails to the food companies. Believe me, they read the letters they receive, and they listen. You are their target market. They want to stay on your good side.

You can also write to the press and to bloggers. Let the world know when you see something that isn’t right. You may feel that the power of one voice is insignificant, but the power of a thousand voices combined grows exponentially.

The Power of Your Pocketbook

Don’t buy junk food. For the sake of your children, don’t even buy it for yourself. Remember, it’s a lot easier to resist temptation at the grocery store than it is to resist temptation at home. If you don’t buy it, it won’t call to you from the pantry, or to your kids.

Junk food undermines your efforts to teach kids good eating habits. Allowing junk food in your home teaches kids to reach for bad food choices, often when they’re not even hungry.

Make it a practice to read labels at the store. You don’t have to understand everything on the label, but do look at the number of calories, the amount of salt, and the amount of sugar. You will start to see patterns, and you’ll learn which foods are good for your kids.

Another way to exercise the power of your pocketbook is to stop allowing your children to watch commercial TV. It’s always good to limit screen time (including both the television and the computer), but it’s also important to determine what type of screen time your kids are allowed. Studies have shown that kids who watch commercial TV are more likely to be overweight or obese than kids who watch DVDs and television shows without commercials.

When your kids don’t see commercials, they don’t crave food that is bad for them. It will make your visits to the grocery store much more pleasant, as your children won’t plead with you to buy these high-salt, high-sugar, low-nutrition foods.

As a parent, you have more power than you realize over childhood obesity. All it takes is awareness and a conscious effort to do everything you can to ensure that your children eat healthy, well-balanced meals. The habits they develop today will influence them for the rest of their lives. Help them to avoid all the health problems associated with being fat. They will thank you for it one day.

And if there’s a picky eater in your family, talk to your pediatrician about healthy strategies to encourage him or her to eat more. Don’t reach for products like chocolate formula.

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One of the main concerns parents share with me, when it comes to providing good nutrition to their family, is the issue of food preparation. Young parents tell me they have difficulties deciding what to buy, how to prepare it and how to balance work and cooking duties.

We all have busy lives, electronic devices and the whole array of technology we all use daily is not helping. If anything, it adds to the consumption of time, allowing still less time to plan meals.

With these concerns in mind I’ve created a one-week sample menu that can be followed step-by-step, taking away a lot of the guess-work and decision-making. You can find this menu plan on my web site and it includes a grocery list and even a financial profile to help you understand the cost of eating healthy.

But before you start, allow me to explain a few items.

The week’s menu should be started on a Sunday. Why? For decades I have been managing the same challenges you have by doing my grocery shopping on Sunday and spending a couple of hours of my Sunday afternoon preparing some of the more time consuming dishes, in order to get ahead of the week.

If you start the menu on any other day, you are going to see references to dishes prepared the day before and the whole menu becomes less helpful.

Check out the grocery list first. It provides you with what you need to get from the store for the whole week. You won’t have to go grocery shopping again for 7 days.

I created the menu for a family of four members, two adults and two children. If the children are toddlers, the menu may last more than one week, since you are going to end up with leftovers on most of the days.

I don’t mention the amount of food to be served per person. For the children, the amount they eat depends on their age. But I do include some general ideas about serving size in the introduction and information. You really need to read it all in order to understand the principal behind the idea.

The menu includes breakfast, afternoon snack (mainly for the children) and dinner. This is because most children eat lunch at school and parents eat at work. Those staying at home can use leftovers from dinner to prepare lunch. This plan works during school days, when most kids require a snack when they come home from school. If you are following this menu in the summer I would suggest skipping the afternoon snack if kids (and adults) get up later that usual.

I hope this menu is a helpful for your busy life. I also hope it can give you the tools to understand how to prepare a balanced meal at home.

I invite you to try it out and to give me feedback about the menu itself, as well as the layout of the web content and your understanding of the concept.

You can find the Dr. K’s Prescription menu, shopping list, and recipes at www.drkatalenas.com.

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In the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President, issued May 2010, the relatively high price of fresh fruits and vegetables is suggested as one possible contributing factor in today’s childhood obesity epidemic. Indeed, the highest incidence of obesity takes place in low-income neighborhoods. Poor children in America aren’t starving to death – they’re eating themselves to death by loading up on high-calorie, low-nutrition foods.

The Task Force recommends changes to national policies that they hope will reduce the price of healthy foods while making unhealthy foods more expensive. They want to level the playing field as far as food prices go because they believe that Americans will choose healthy foods when given that choice. The stated goal of their report is to solve the problem of childhood obesity in the U.S. within a generation.

But You Can’t Wait a Generation

You can’t wait until their policies take effect. Your children are growing up now. The Task Force recommends big-picture changes that will steer the country in the right direction, but the change in direction will happen slowly, like an ocean liner fighting the tide to turn around. You’re more nimble. You can move fast. By acting now, you can make an immediate impact on your children’s health.

Can you afford to feed your kids fruits and vegetables?

The better question is: Can you afford not to?

While you’re budgeting for your family meals, consider this. The financial cost of childhood obesity is likely to be much higher than making healthy choices at the grocery store. Buying fruits and vegetables may be slightly more expensive than buying processed foods, but in the long run, you’ll save money when you eat healthy.

Childhood Obesity Is Expensive

Overweight kids are more likely to suffer from a host of medical problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, and more. Don’t allow your eyes to simply brush past those words. Stop and think about what you’re doing to your children when you allow them to get fat. In extreme cases, each of these health issues can lead to death. They will certainly lead to more visits to the doctor and the drugstore, which will cost you more money.

Children who don’t eat a healthy diet often have difficulty academically. They need the proper nutrients in order to focus. They simply can’t concentrate. Weigh the cost of healthy food against the cost of hiring a tutor or shelling out for after-school programs, and the choice becomes a little easier.

Many obese children suffer from low self-esteem, which can lead to behavioral problems in school, at home, and in public. A poorly behaved child is by definition more destructive than a well behaved child, and you as the parent will pay for that destruction in one way or another. If low self-esteem leads to depression, as it often does, you may find yourself paying for counseling, as well.

If you still think you can’t afford to pay a little extra for the fruits, vegetables, and whole grains your children need, take a good, long look at how you spend your money. You love your children. You would die for them. You’re willing to sacrifice your life for them, but are you willing to sacrifice cable TV? Are you willing to sacrifice your cell phone?

Nothing is more important than the wellbeing of your children.

Dr. Marta Katalenas, M.D.

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Teenagers are notoriously unhealthy eaters. They are still young enough to feel as though they’ll live forever but are old enough to want to make their own decisions about what to eat. Nagging them won’t work. In fact, nagging is more likely to make them rebel.

Instead, parents should make it easy for teens to make good choices by following these simple tips.

Give them “fast food” choices at home

A bowl of fruit is beautiful. Dark red apples, brilliant oranges, lovely yellow bananas. The colors are eye-catching… and yet, teens may walk past this beautiful bowl of fruit for a week until, sadly, parents are forced to throw it in the trash. If they go through this cycle often enough, they might give up and stop buying fruit.

But when parents put out a plate of apple wedges or orange slices already peeled, the fruit is likely to disappear within minutes. Same food, different presentation. When food is easy to grab and go, teens are likely to reach for a healthy snack.

The same is true of vegetables. When teens come home from school to find a handy vegetable tray in the refrigerator, they can get an after-school energy boost with nutritional value. Grocery stores make this very easy. Busy parents will pay a premium to get fruits and vegetables pre-cut, but when the additional cost is weighed against the health costs of overloading on junk food, the proper choice is clear.

Sneak stealthy healthy foods into their favorite meals

There are easy ways to make teens’ favorite meals healthier, and the whole family benefits from the extra vitamins. With lasagna, for example, fresh, chopped spinach can be added to the cheese layer. The spinach doesn’t noticeably change the flavor, but it certainly changes the nutrition count.

Most teens love pizza. Whole wheat pizza crust is a delicious base. Whole grains take longer to digest, so whole wheat crust will keep teens feeling full longer and will help prevent them from overeating. Pizza can be a very healthy choice, especially when made with low-fat mozzarella and lots of vegetables.

Ask teens to pack a lunch each evening

Teens often skip lunch simply because they’re too rushed in the morning to pack lunch, and they don’t have cash to buy a meal at school. (Just as bad, they have plenty of cash, and they fill up on junk.) If parents make it a part of the routine each evening for teens to make their lunch the night before – and provide healthy choices – then the groggy early-morning teen need only grab the lunch bag on his way out the door.

Let teens feed the family once a week

Teaching teens about nutrition is great, but when “teaching” turns to “lecturing,” they’ll tune parents out. But teens might appreciate being given responsibility for feeding the family once a week, or even just once in a while. If the young person grumbles, parents can turn it into something fun by allowing a friend to come over to help. At this age, children are very social, and they love any excuse to be with their friends.

The teens can plan the meal in advance, and talk it over briefly with parents to ensure it’s properly balanced. In this way, they’ll learn about nutrition by doing, which is always better than learning by listening to an adult drone on and on.

At www.kidshealth.org/teens, kids can learn about the food pyramid and find recipes. The site is packed with information about the body, so teens can learn answers to questions they’re too embarrassed to ask.

Dr. Marta Katalenas, M.D.

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Summary: To be effective, any campaign against childhood obesity must include intervention strategies to combat obesity in preschool children, say researchers at the University of California San Francisco in a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

When childhood obesity is in the news, it’s often discussed in tandem with changes needed to school lunch programs. First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign focuses a lot of attention on making school lunches healthier. A group of retired military veterans recently took up the school lunch cause, as well, because they have found many children graduating high school are too fat to qualify for military service. TV chef Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution series focused on the issue, as well.

They’re not wrong. School lunches must be made healthier.

But to be effective, any campaign against childhood obesity must also address the needs of preschoolers, say researchers at the University of California San Francisco in a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The report was written by Dr. Janet M. Wojcicki and Dr. Melvin B. Heyman.

By the age of two, about one-third of all children in the U.S. are overweight or obese. This is not cute childhood chubbiness; it’s excess weight that causes real harm to their little bodies. Dr. Wojcicki and Dr. Heyman discovered markers in three-year-olds that have been linked to heart disease later in life.

What Parents Can Do for Infants to Prevent an Overweight Toddlers

First, mom should not smoke while she’s pregnant, period. Ironically, although smoking is linked to low birth weight in babies, the bad habit also influences the body’s ability to regulate weight later in life. So an underweight infant can become an overweight toddler.

Second, mothers should follow their doctors’ recommendations when it comes to breast feeding. Shorter-than-recommended breastfeeding has been linked to childhood obesity, as well as many other health concerns.

Third, parents should establish a routine that allows the baby to get plenty of sleep.  Lack of sleep also hurts the body’s ability to regulate weight. This is true from infancy through adulthood.

Whenever possible, an infant should be allowed to sleep in quiet surroundings. In other words, parents should not rely on the fact that their baby is sleeping in the car or at the ball game and say that the baby gets plenty of sleep. At loud sounds, deep sleep is frequently interrupted, even if the baby’s eyes don’t completely open. Deep, uninterrupted sleep is the goal.

What Parents Can Do to Encourage Healthy Habits Toddlers

Parents of small children should turn off the TV and the computer until after the children are in bed. Even if the children aren’t watching the TV or playing on the computer, these machines deprive the child of the parent’s attention. Parents need to make a commitment to unplug from the world for at least a couple of hours each evening.

Instead of mindlessly watching TV or chatting online with their friends, parents can play with their children. Play is exercise, and this activity can help a child to maintain a healthy weight. This time together will also cement the bond between parent and child, in addition to helping the child develop great social skills.

Another step parents can take is to abolish unhealthy snacks from the house. These snacks are hard for adults to resist, impossible for toddlers. If, instead of stocking the pantry with potato chips and sugary cereal, parents only kept on hand fruit, vegetables, cheese, and other healthy snacks, children wouldn’t have the option to fill their bodies with junk.

It is undoubtedly true that school lunches must be made healthier. However, the problem of childhood obesity is evident long before children reach school age. That means that parents must take charge of their child’s diet right from the start.

Posted in Healthy Eating, Newborns & Infants | 2 Comments »

One reason for today’s childhood obesity epidemic is that children do not eat enough fruits and vegetables. Instead, they fill up on packaged food with little to no nutritional value. But how do you get your kids excited about eating more fruits and veggies? Introduce them to farmers markets!

This is especially important if you ask your child where vegetables come from, and she answers, “The grocery store.”

With the arrival of spring comes the return of farmers markets throughout most of the United States. In addition to helping the local economy when you regularly visit farmers markets, you can help your kids combat childhood obesity simply because of the personal connection that children make with the people who grow their food.

Let Your Child Decide What’s for Dinner

Children love to shop. In the grocery store, it can be dangerous to allow your child to shop for himself because kids often gravitate toward the high sugar, high salt, packaged foods they see advertised on TV. But at a farmers market, you can give your child a few dollars and let him choose something that looks delicious to him.

Make the experience a multisensory one. Encourage him to admire all the colors of fresh produce. Talk about how you can tell when various fruits and vegetables are ripe. Smell the produce. If farmers offer small samples, let your child take a bite and then tell you what he thinks.

When your child settles on a purchase, don’t question the decision, even if it’s an unconventional choice. Together, you can find recipes online for anything you buy. If it’s not a hit, tell your child that he can choose something else next week. Make a game of it!

Meet Local Farmers

As you’re walking around the farmers market, encourage your child to ask questions of the farmers. How long does it take to grow green beans? What time of year should you plant a tomato?

And my favorite question: Do you welcome visitors to your farm? Farmers are some of the hardest workers of any career field, but even so, many will allow visitors from time to time. Visiting a farm is another amazing way to help your child look at vegetables as a good thing. As you and your child walk through rows of plants, you can foster a sense of wonder at the incredible life cycle of plants.

While you’re there, buy a dozen fresh eggs if you get the chance! Breakfast for dinner with farm fresh eggs is an experience your child won’t soon forget.

Grow Your Own Vegetables

The farmers market might inspire your child to want to grow something of her own. You might not have the space or time to grow a vegetable garden in your back yard, but do you have enough time to grow one plant in a pot? Choose a plant that is likely to succeed, such as a tomato or a green bean. You can even read Jack & the Beanstalk before you get started, although that story might set up unreasonable expectations in young children. Let your child dig the hole, plant the seed, and care for the plant as it grows. And, of course, your little farmer gets the first bite of the delicious results.

How to Find a Farmers Market Near You

LocalHarvest.org has a database of thousands of farmers markets around the country. Search for your zip code to find a farmers market near you. Enjoy nature’s bounty!

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Walking is an easy exercise modality available to everyone. Walking in the morning stimulates the body’s metabolic rate for the day making us more productive and energized.

Some Japanese companies encourage their employees to exercise for a few minutes at the beginning of the working day, in order to boost their productivity.

We started a walking club at Pediatric Center of Round Rock. Right now it is just five of us, but we are having a lot of fun as we enjoy the fresh spring air in the morning. We walk for about 30 minutes around the Round Rock Hospital campus and surrounding area, from 8 AM to 8:30 AM.

Come and join us!

Winter is not a good season for me. Like many of you I prefer spring, summer and fall in Texas. Now that I started walking again I feel like taking every opportunity to escape out of the house with any excuse in mind. Yesterday, as I was starting dinner, I realized I needed a couple of ingredients for my meal. Natalie and I strapped the dogs in their harnesses, grabbed the eco-friendly HEB green bag and started our walk to the grocery store.

I was planning on cooking black-eyed peas for dinner, but at the last minute I found out I was missing leeks and carrots. The ingredients for my black-eyed pea soup include a 1 bag of peas (1 lb), 1 leek, 2 carrots, 1 medium onion, 2 garlic cloves, olive oil and pimenton (Spanish Paprika). When I looked in the refrigerator I found no leeks and no carrots. Surprise! But I did have a bunch of celery that was looking at me with despair while appearing warped and sad. The peas had been soaking since the morning and there was no turning back now.

While Natalie was getting the dogs ready to walk to the store, I salted the onion, garlic and cut-up celery in some olive oil. A couple of minutes later I added the black-eyed peas, stirring constantly and added water to cover. I turned the stove to low and I instructed my husband to keep an eye on the soup, adding cold water if needed, while we walked to HEB to buy the leeks and carrots.

It was warm and humid, which made us use even more energy during the walk. The dogs loved it; they enjoy stopping at the Cat Hollow Park for some water in the middle of the trip.

By the time we made it back to the house the soup was already cooked. Soaking the beans ahead really cuts down cooking time. I didn’t see the need to add the leeks and carrots now, when the other ingredients were completely cooked.

The next step consisted of heating some olive oil in a saucepan and adding two links of sausage, cut up in small pieces. Then we added a couple of teaspoonfuls of Spanish paprika (pimenton) and when the sausage was mildly brown, we added it all to the peas, stirring all ingredients together. We add salt to taste and the soup was complete.

We prepared a green salad with some lettuce and tomatoes and dinner was done. Painless! A couple of slices of French bread gave the final touch.

Who said cooking a healthy meal has to be elaborate and difficult?

Marta Katalenas M.D.

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In February 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama joined with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to launch the Let’s Move campaign against childhood obesity. The unhealthy choices kids make today can bring consequences the rest of their lives. And those lives may not be as long as their parents’. For the first time in history, the United States faces the very real possibility of a decrease in life expectancy.

The government is getting involved because the obesity epidemic in children will lead to even more obesity in adults, which will further lead to a greatly increased toll on our public sector. If the obesity trend is not reversed, more people will develop diabetes, more people will suffer from debilitating joint pain, more people will have strokes, and more people will become unable to work and have to rely upon public assistance.

Let’s Move has four components:

1. Educate and support parents
2. Provide healthier food in schools
3. Help children be more active
4. Ensure that healthy, affordable food is available everywhere in the country

Better Educated Parents

The parent education component is key, particularly when children are young. Children don’t often choose what they are going to eat. Parents choose, and parents also choose how the children will spend their free time, too. When parents understand the consequences of their choices, they will make better decisions on behalf of the children they love.

As part of the parent education component of the Let’s Move program, the AAP recommends that pediatricians measure their patients’ body-mass index (BMI) at every well child check-up beginning at age 2, and then discuss the results with parents. When necessary, the pediatrician should write a prescription for healthy living, with recommendations on food choices and how to encourage the children to be more active.Healthier School Lunches

Many children eat half of their daily calories at school, so it’s important that those calories are packed with nutritional value. If unhealthy choices are unavailable, children will develop a palate for healthy foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables.

This year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will work with schools and with partners in the private sector to double the number of schools that meet the Healthier U.S. Schools Challenge. Major school food suppliers are reworking their menus to decrease fat, salt, and sugar in their foods, and to increase the amount of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains they serve.

More Active Children

Parents and children can have fun together earning the President’s Active Lifestyle Challenge award. [link: http://www.presidentschallenge.org/the_challenge/active_lifestyle.aspx

For six weeks, adults must document at least 30 minutes of activity per day, six days a week, and children must document at least 60 minutes per day, six days a week.

It is hoped that by the end of the challenge, this level of activity will become a habit, and will be maintained after the award is earned. Once a person earns the President’s Active Lifestyle Challenge award, he or she can work toward becoming a President’s Champion.

Mrs. Obama has also called upon the help of professional sports organizations such as the National Football League to help in this effort. The NFL and other pro sports organizations will help motivate and inspire kids to become more active by showing how fun it can be.

Available, Healthy Food Nationwide

Some of the poorest people in this country are also the most prone to obesity because poverty-stricken people are more likely to live in areas where fresh, healthy food choices are either not available or are prohibitively expensive. These low-income areas, both urban and rural, are more than a mile from the nearest supermarket, and the people who live here often do not have reliable transportation. In conjunction with the Let’s Move campaign, the government plans to provide financing to bring supermarkets and grants to bring farmers markets into the food deserts.

For more information about this exciting new campaign in the war against childhood obesity, visit www.letsmove.gov

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