Michelle Obama released her plan to fight childhood obesity.  Her goal is to solve the problem within a generation which is a pretty ambitious goal.  This means decreasing childhood obesity rates to 5% by the year 2030!

Her plan entails implementing an interagency plan that details a coordinated strategy with clearly defined goals, benchmarks and measureable outcomes to ensure success.  I fully agree that there must be accountability if we are going to truly “stop talking and studying this problem” and move towards “making significant impactful changes to address the problem”.    Don’t get me wrong, we need data and analysis but it seems that is where the government gets stuck.  Creating task forces to study problems and  we need to shift energies to action and implemented solutions.

Here is a summary of the recommendations:

• Getting children a healthy start on life, with good prenatal care for their parents; support for breastfeeding; adherence to limits on “screen time”; and quality child care settings with nutritious food and ample opportunity for young children to be physically active.
• Empowering parents and caregivers with simpler, more actionable messages about nutritional choices based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans; improved labels on food and menus that provide clear information to help parents make healthy choices for children; reduced marketing of unhealthy products to children; and improved health care services, including BMI measurement for all children.
• Providing healthy food in schools, through improvements in federally-supported school lunches and breakfasts; upgrading the nutritional quality of other foods sold in schools; and improving nutrition education and the overall health of the school environment.
• Improving access to healthy, affordable food, by eliminating “food deserts” in urban and rural America; lowering the relative prices of healthier foods; developing or reformulating food products to be healthier; and reducing the incidence of hunger, which has been linked to obesity.
• Getting children more physically active, through quality physical education, recess, and other opportunities in and after school; addressing aspects of the “built environment” that make it difficult for children to walk or bike safely in their communities; and improving access to safe parks, playgrounds, and indoor and outdoor recreational facilities.

I applaud her conviction, dedication and tenacity in leading the fight against childhood obesity and helping to bring it to the nation’s center spotlight.

Please share your thoughts and related resources below.

With the growing awareness about childhood obesity, politicians are looking to new legislation to fight the problem.

There is discussion that the government should begin tracking the weight of children ages 2 to 18.  This is information routinely collected during yearly pediatric visits.  Some congressional leaders are looking at a bill that would require doctors to report this information to the government.

What would they do with this information?  Would parents be notified by the government that their kids are overweight or would this just give more trending information?  Not sure what they are planning to do with this information and how this would ultimately help parents.

Wouldn’t it be better if doctors could spend a little more time with their patients and give some guidance to parents right there during the pediatric visit.  Why not put the money that it would cost to create the database and manage it towards providing some nutrition counseling for parents and young children as part of all pediatric wellness visits

Don’t we have enough data?

I remember reading my children stories right before they went to sleep.  Of course that was when they were little and that was quite a while ago.  But I still keep an eye out for cute stories that parents can read to their children that have a healthy message.

Well, I found a cute story with a healthy message that your child might enjoy for storytime.  It’s called Sending you Sammy by Sarah Butland.  A cute little story with happy artwork about a little boy who is chosen to be a superhero because he likes healthy foods.  He becomes BananaBoy and is tasked to help his friends eat healthier too.

What I love is story time is another fun and memorable time to promote healthy eating in a fun and positive way.  I tested it out on my 6 year old niece and she had lots of questions which gave me the opportunity to talk about the importance of healthy foods and how it makes her grow and do well in school and have energy to have fun and more.

Read more about the book and upcoming events associated with Adventures of Sammy.  For kids, Sarah has created a free fanclub.

You can find the book at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

That is what this is all about.  It is about reaching out to children in many different ways and introducing healthy foods in fun, creative and positive ways.   There are many ways to introduce nutrition and reinforce it.

We have started a list of healthy storytime books for kids below. If you have a special or creative way that you help your children eat healthier, please share it with us by leaving a comment.

Links to books:

Sending you Sammy- Book

We Eat Food That’s Fresh- Book and CD

Havoc at the Hillside Market- Book

May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month.  This is actually a great time to remind us how important it is to find physical activities to do with our kids.  Why?  Many of us may have started out the year with great enthusiasm but with busy lives, work and keeping up the kids, it is easy to forget our health and activity goals.

But, that’s okay.  It happens to most of us (including me!)  Just a great reminder to get moving again.

Here is a list of activities that you and the kids can choose from.  The most important thing is to have fun.  Don’t think exercise, think being active and FUN!  Find the activities that you and your kids enjoy!  Then you will want to keep doing it.  And try new activities, too!

Related resources:

Activity Goal Sheet for Kids

Activity Tracking Sheet for kids- print out to track daily and weekly activity

Michelle Obama announced today, May 17, 2010,  that the Food and Beverage Manufacturer have agreed to make changes to their food products that will result in a 1.5 trillion calorie reduction by 2015.  That’s a lot of calories!

So what exactly does that mean.

The companies that support the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation will be offering more lower calorie options food products and creating new foods that are lower in calories.

How exactly will they do this?

• changing product recipes where possible to lower the calorie content of current products
• reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products

I think this is a good step in the right direction and my only concern is that the food manufacturers don’t start adding chemicals and unnatural additives to substitute for lower fats and sugars in the food products.  So read the labels to make sure that low fat or low sugar or “low calorie” items are not be compensated with chemicals to make them taste good.  It is really in our hands.  If we don’t buy unhealthy foods, food manufacturers will stop making them.  If we want smaller portion goods, than we need to buy it.  That is what drives these companies, it is their sales.

But I really have a great deal of respect for Michelle Obama because she is serious in her quest.   We hear about changes all the time, but don’t really see them because there is no accountability.  Michelle doesn’t just want talk, she wants results.  To help make sure that these companies are going to honor their commitment:

“The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will support a rigorous, independent evaluation of how the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation’s efforts to reduce calories in the marketplace affect calories consumed by children and adolescents. RWJF will publicly report its findings.”   (from press release)

Well, I will be watching and sharing more news on this topic  as it comes out.
If you have thoughts, opinions or ideas about this, please share them below

Here is a mini ‘Let’s Move’ commercial featuring NBA star, Kevin Durant, that you can share with your kids.  This little video helps reminds kids why it is important to move everyday.  I thought it was very well done and uses a combination of kids, fun activities and characters to get the message across to move every day!

Enjoy and share this with your kids:

Related Resources:

Let’s Move.Gov

Printable ‘Move it Minutes’ Tracking Goal Sheet- kids set goals and track 1 hour of daily physical activity

First I want to acknowledge that this National Nurses Week.  Thank you fellow nurses for your tireless and compassionate work caring for the sick and for teaching people healthy living skills.

I am always looking for fun ways to promote nutrition and exercise to kids and families.  Well Fit Factor Kids is promoting a walking event by creating a team that will walk 100,000,000 million steps!  Sounds crazy?  Not really, because we all make up the team!  And together we can all log in quite a few steps.  They are asking everyone to reply to their blog and share the number of steps you walk. They make it easy, because you can send them your steps by email, facebook, twitter etc once a day, once a week or whatever is easiest for you.  They will tally it all up.

This kind of challenge reminds me of trying to break a world record when we were kids!  This can be one of those fun things you do with the kids and track your steps for the whole family each time you walk.  Just think what a great message you will be sending kids and a fun challenge for the whole family to make an event out of it and see how many steps you can add towards this 100,000,000 million steps.

Walking is one of the best exercises and easy to do and great family time too. Join the virtual walking team it’s fun and healthy!

Related Resources:

Tracking your Walking with Chef Solus’ free printable- Fun Daily Steps- Tracking Sheet for Kids

You can also use a pedometer or track steps by estimating miles walked & multiply by 2000 (average step count)

Fit Factor Kids on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FitFactorKids

Follow me on Twitter  http://twitter.com/kidshealthtips

Send a Free Nurses Week E-Card to show appreciation to nurses during National Nurses Week.

There has been quite a bit of buzz about a new law passed in Santa Clara County in California.  The new law essentials bans restaurants from using toys to lure kids to meals high in fat, sugar and calories.

It is true that a toy does not make kids gain weight, it is the food.  And, yes it is also true that parents have the ultimately authority to not buy unhealthy foods for their kids.

But let’s face it.  this is marketing at its finest and parents need some help.  It is very challenging to combat the billions of dollars of advertising the food industry spends to entice kids to want their foods.  And adding that little extra toy only makes the meal that much more enticing.

I am not trying to make excuses for parents who can’t say no to their kids, but I understand that their job is not easy.  Kids can recognize the “McDonalds” golden archers before they can really talk!  I remember being a kids and wanting the cereal with the toy inside it.  I also remember how much my kids wanted the “Happy Meal”, not so much for the food but for the toy it was promoting.  Kids like toys.

There are so many studies showing how adding a fun character, game, or toy helps kids build a positive mind  association with that food.

So is the ban the ultimate solution,? No, but it can help.  We have a growing problem of unhealthy kids.  We are talking about heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes and poor nutrition and it is going to take a great deal of creative organizations, laws and support from all areas of our society to change our current situation.

At Nourish Interactive, we believe strongly in early nutrition education for kids while they are still forming their food habits.   And helping kids build an association with fun and nutrition is also part of our mission.   We think it is important for kids to have fun while they learn about nutrition.  We hope our characters, nutrition games and fun nutrition activities are helping kids move towards healthy foods.

Related information:
California County bans toys in happy meals

I am happy to share with you some exciting news.  Nourish Interactive has teamed up with Fresh Choice Restaurants to promote healthy eating to kids.

To combat all the junk food marketing, we need to also provide fun “marketing” or education about healthy foods.  ie. “It is fun to eat healthy foods!”  That is our goal and by extending ourselves into this restaurant, we can work together to offer kids healthy foods while they are learning about healthy eating in a positive way.

We are very excited about this partnership because Fresh Choice is very much aligned with our goals to promote healthy eating in a fun and positive way.  Fresh Choice has their own farm and serves fresh produce as part of their daily menu.

I can honestly say, that when my children were young, we went to this restaurant because it was affordable, catered to families and their foods were nutritious.  You won’t find a 600 calorie burger at this restaurant.  But the selection is healthy and varied enough so that the kids and adults could all find dishes that were delicious.  That is not always easy to find as a parent.

And as part of our partnership,

• we will be promoting nutrition to kids in the restaurant through fun positive messaging.  For example, this month, kids will receive a free nutrition coloring page to enjoy as the family enjoys their meal
• offering a free kids meal coupon to kids that play the new Yummy Drops game (our new online game that promotes the fruit group. )

About our In-Restaurant Nutrition Education for Kids

We are starting with a farm to table education series.  It is surprising but many kids don’t really know where fruits and vegetables come from.  Our goal is to help them learn in a fun way where fruits and vegetables come from as they journey from the farm to the restaurant.  There is much research indicating that helping kids connect with fresh fruits and vegetables will peak their interest and taste buds to eat more of them.  We know that most kids do not get their adequate servings of fruits and vegetables and our mission is to change that.

And this is just the start.  We have lots of other ideas on how to reach out to kids during their restaurant experience to promote healthy food choices!

Look for Chef Solus and the produce bunch at the Fresh Choice Restaurant!

How to get your Free Kids Meal Coupon:

Just have your child play the Yummy Drops game (also available in Spanish) and then at the end of the game,  click on the link that says “Open your surprise”.   This will open a pdf that has a little maze game, certificate for being an Ace Pilot and delivering fresh fruits, and a free kids’ meal coupon for Fresh Choice Restaurants and Zoopa Restaurants.

Just print the kids meal coupon and bring it the nearest Fresh Choice or Zoopa Restaurant.

Located in the California, Washington and Texas (Find a Fersh Choice or Zoopa Restaurant near you)

“Farm Fresh Food Coloring Page” for kids- Fresh Choice “Fun Pages”

More About Fresh Choice and Why We Feel They Are A Great Partner

These were the characteristics about this Restaurant that really impressed me:

Fresh Choice is committed to healthy foods (See their menu for yourself):

• all their fresh fruits and vegetables come from local farms, including their own Fresh Choice farm
• their dishes are designed to use the seasonal fruits and vegetables, everything is fresh (really just picked)
• all their foods are well labeled and every dish has the calories listed to help patrons make informed portion selections
• Fresh Choice offers a very impressive spread of healthy foods, mostly great salads, vegetables and fruits
• their dips, dressings and desserts are all available in the low calorie versions
• they also have healthy pizzas! that taste great and kids love

Cater to families:

• they are very affordable for families
• they have a casual environment which is great for kids
• they work with the community to promote reading through their “Lettuce Read” program
• they support fund raising for schools

Fresh Choice commitment to the environment:

• participates in the ClimateSmart program to reduce greenhouse gases.  Their changes are estimated to reduce 8.8 million pounds of greenhouse emissions (equivalent to taking 731 cars off the road each year.)

Quick Resources:

Free Kids Meal Coupon- Play Game – get your free kids meal coupon, while your child hears some positive messaging about fruits

Yummy Drops Game in Spanish

Fresh Choice Partnership page

Fresh Choice Restaurant locations

Fresh Choice Menu

Were you able to turn off that TV last week?  If you missed it or were not able to formally participate during the national “Turn Off the TV” week, you can still participate.

It is really never too late teach the kids the importance of limiting their screen time.  In fact, now is a perfect time to focus your family’s time away from the TV onto other activities!  You can make it a fun family event, a challenge really.  Kids like challenges if they are presented in a fun way.

What is most important, is that many families will find it easier to reduce TV time to the recommended 2 hours or less following an event or activity like this.

Keep it fun and positive so kids will look forward to it rather than dread it.  And keep them involved – they have great ideas.

Resources to help you get started- it’s important and it can really help your children/family reduce the amount of time they watch TV.

National Turn Your TV Off – teaches kids about being active and fighting childhood obesity

Turn off the TV” guide.

Printable- Limiting TV Time Hours Kids Agreement Sheet

Printable TV Pledge- Family and Kids Turn Off TV Week

Reducing Kids TV Time Weekly Goals Tracking Chart- Printable Chart for Tracking Screen Time-

Healthy Tips-Kids Healthy Snack Food Ideas

Turn Off The TV Tips- Fun Activities For Kids

There are thousands of studies indicating a negative effect on kids that watch too much TV (over 2 hours a day).

Children living in households with multiple televisions tended to engage in more sedentary behaviors (Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 2007)

Children eat foods high in fat/sugar while watching TV. Children requested the foods they had seen advertised on weekend morning children’s TV broadcasts  (Pediatrics International 2006)

If you are still not convinced that this is important,  here are some statements from leading organizations:

1. The American Academy of Pediatrics urges parents to avoid television and other electronic media for children two years of age and under.–AAP statement, August 2, 1999

2. Overweight U.S. babies are more numerous since 1980, a study in the journal Obesity found, growing to 6% from 3% of those under 6 months old. Wall Street Journal 2006

3. Seventy percent of day-care centers use TV during a typical day.–Tashman, Billy, “Sorry Ernie, TV isn’t Teaching,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 1994

4. In a study of preschoolers (ages 1-4), a child’s risk of being overweight increased by six percent for every hour of television watched per day.  If that child had a TV in his or her bedroom, the odds of being overweight jumped an additional thirty-one percent for every hour watched.  Preschool children with TVs in their bedroom watched an additional 4.8 hours of TV or videos every week.–Dennison, et.al. 2002

5. Research now indicates that for every hour of television children watch each day, their risk of developing attention-related problems later increases by ten percent.  For example, if a child watches three hours of television each day, the child would be thirty percent more likely to develop attention deficit disorder.–D. Christakis, Pediatrics, April 2004

6. One in four children under the age of two years has a TV in his or her bedroom.–Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers, Kaiser Family Foundation and the Children’s Digital Media Centers, 2003

7. The more TV preschoolers watch, the less well they do academically in the first grade; also, The more TV preschoolers watch, the less well-socialized they are in the first grade.–Burton, Sydney, James Calonico and Dennis McSeveney, “Effects of Preschool Television Watching on First-Grade Children,” Journal of Communication, Summer 1979

8. Children in households where the TV is on “always” or “most of the time” are less likely to read than are children in other homes. Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers, Kaiser Family Foundation and the Children’s Digital Media Centers, 2003

Children six and under spend an average of two hours a day using screen media, about the same amount of time they spend playing outside, and well over the amount they spend reading or being read to (39 minutes).–Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers, Kaiser Family Foundation and the Children’s Digital Media Centers, 2003

(Source:  Screentime.org)