Michelle Obama's latest move to curb childhood obesity is a PG system restricting menus for unaccompanied children, writes MICHELLE McDONAGH
WHEN THE first lady of the United States launched her Let’s Move! campaign almost two years ago, her goal was to “solve the problem of obesity within a generation, so that children born today will grow up healthier and able to pursue their dreams”.
Since then, Michelle Obama has addressed governors, mayors, school groups, food and beverage manufacturers and other organisations, urging them to build more cycle paths and playgrounds, to serve healthier school lunches and to make and sell more healthy food.
She has visited schools across the country to see what changes they are making, from planting fruit and vegetable gardens modelled after her own celebrated White House plot to opening salad bars in their lunchrooms. And she’s worked herself into a sweat at exercise clinics with children, including on the White House lawn.
One of the latest victories in Ms Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity is the introduction of a PG system for menus by a major US restaurant operator. Darden Restaurants, which owns several nationwide chains, will require children to have parental permission when they order chips with a meal. Fruit or vegetable side dishes and low-fat milk will become the standard option instead.
Amid growing calls for healthier options, the restaurants will also reduce calories and sodium in meals for children by 20 per cent over the next decade. Darden, which owns 1,900 restaurants in 49 states, including the popular Olive Garden, is the latest US restaurant operator to offer healthier meals to children, following moves by McDonald’s and Burger King to offer fruit.
Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled, and today, nearly one in three children in America is overweight or obese. The numbers are even higher in African-American and Hispanic communities, where nearly 40 per cent of children are overweight or obese.
The Let’s Move! initiative aims to put children on the path to a healthy future during their earliest months and years by giving parents helpful information and fostering environments that support healthy choices. It also aims to provide healthier foods in schools, to ensure that every family has access to healthy, affordable food and to help children become more physically active.
“As a mom, I know that keeping your kids healthy isn’t always easy. It takes time. It takes energy. And, believe me, I know it takes patience. Sometimes, after a long day, it’s just easier to give in when they ask for a cookie between meals. It’s just easier to grab takeout on the way home,” the mother of two daughters says.
However, she also says no matter what, it is the responsibility of parents to make sure their children are eating right and getting enough exercise. Through her Let’s Move! campaign, she aims to make it easier for parents to do this.
She says: “We’re working to get you the information you need at home and at the grocery store.
“We’ve worked with beverage companies to help make the number of calories clearer on the label. Walmart, where 140 million people shop every week, has pledged to reduce sugar, salt and trans-fats in the products on its shelves.”
A coalition of US retailers, food and beverage manufacturers, restaurants, and many other businesses is pledging to remove more than a trillion calories from the marketplace.
A new child-nutrition law aims to make all school food more nutritious by letting Washington decide what kinds of foods may be sold on school grounds, including in vending machines and at fundraisers.
The beverage industry has started putting labels with calorie counts on the front of its bottles, cans and packages of soft drinks, juices, teas and waters. The goal is to have a label on all non-alcoholic drinks by the end of 2012.
As part of this effort, president Barack Obama established the first ever taskforce on childhood obesity to develop and implement an interagency plan that details a co-ordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks and outlines an action plan to end the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.
The goal of the action plan is to reduce the childhood obesity rate to 5 per cent by 2030 – the rate that existed before childhood obesity first began to rise in the late 1970s.
Ms Obama has chalked up a number of successes over the first two years of the campaign, but she is not without her critics.
Republicans and Democrats alike have spoken out against funding the initiative through further cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance “food stamp” programme. And former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin claimed Ms Obama’s anti-obesity push reflected a belief that parents could not be trusted “to make decisions for their own children”.
On the other hand, advocates who have been working on the anti-obesity issue for a long time, including the American Heart Association, say the first lady’s involvement is raising awareness about the potential future of the US as a nation of fat, unhealthy people unless the trend is reversed.