Children being fed poorly is an epidemic in America.

i find the subject of Childhood obesity really important because it is definitely preventable. Childhood obesity and the eating habits responsible for it are really creating a generation of kids that are not gonna have a longer lifespan than their parents...the first time for that...and that is not a good first to be having.

Click here :- Read more 

Obesity in Kids considered to be Child Abuse by State

I was reading the Miami Herald three days ago and it discussed the possibility of the State of Florida taking away custody of children who's parents let them get obese.

While i do not agree the state has such a right, i do agree with the premise that allowing a child to become obese and get diabetes essentially ruins his chances of living a wonderful and peaceful life. Obesity in Children is essentially a form of child abuse.

So what is needed is some intelligence in action. No more sugary drinks, no more fried foods, no more meat, and more fruits, more exercise, more reading. We need to all realize that a 5 year old child has no right to tell an adult what they should be eating. A 5 year old kid just does not know enough to make the correct decisions, and may simply always ask for Coca cola instead of fresh juice because the option is there. But the juice would be both better tasting and much healthier.

If anyone wants to create a scientific study on weight loss in kids with different diets i can assist in the design of such a study and it is needed. The solution to childhood obesity is literally obvious. Now let us raise awareness and start some actions.

Florida's obese are part of a growing nation - Miami Herald Today

Obesity in Florida has increased 80% between 1995 and 2110, according to the Miami Herald today.

You know it is really amazing now nobody in charge of anything has any interest in solving this situation of obesity of kids and diabetes and all the sadness and grief and early death.

it really is amazing that nobody wants to simply do some real world experiments with obesity and different diets and exercise programs over a series of 2 years. The real issue is that few people are actually interested in health, only numbers of weight.... that is true on both sides of the story. Those who want to lose weight are obsessed with weight loss not health, those that want to gain weight and muscle mass are obsesed with that goal of looking like the guy in the magazine and don't care about health.

We must first distinguish health as our intention. Internal, External, Mental, Emotional Health and Wellbeing is my only intention in discussing this stuff. The herd is going off the cliff i read different articles every day and if anyone pieces it all together it reveals an unprecedented epidemic of health problems that almost everyone seems to be facing. the prescription medication trends and the obesity and diabetes and cancer rates, and the lack of exercise and general sedentary lifestyle is epidemic. the herd is going off the cliff. we dont have to follow is all i suggest... not to live forever, which is impossible, but to live higher quality of life in the present!

One person at a time we can all just make small changes like eat less potato chips and drink less soda and fried foods and meat... just a bit less... whatever small steps you initially take will create your momentem for the great leap that will land you across the other side of the divide. You can't cross a cross a chasm is two small jumps... it must be one giant leap! so have fun.... iuf you have questions about food just email me... fredb@miamiyoga.com

USDA Finally Repeals the Food Pyramid

NY Times Reports that USDA has repealed and replaced the 'Food Pyramid' guideline to what constitutes a healthy meal. It is good that it has been replaced by something slightly better and easier to understand. Now it is represented as a plate of food with the size proportions visually scaled to priority. The good thing is that fruits and vegetables are seen as a foundation and more than 50%.

Obesity and eating habits are obviously directly linked and the obesity epidemic in the USA show no sign of abating. We must all realize that so many problems can all get solved if you relinquish our dependence on animal foods. Not only will we become a healthier and happier species overall, we also can solve deforestation, global warming, and many other environmental threats that our habits have created.

Remember that the single most important thing you can do to stop global warming or slow it, is to become a vegan. It is that simple. Healthy Person, Healthy Planet is how this thing works i believe.

USDA to reshape how we see dietary nutrition

The decades-old food pyramid is on the way out. It is expected to be replaced with a plate-shaped icon that experts say better depicts the balance of food groups recommended in a healthful diet.

Obesity Surgery May Become Option for Many More - A Fantastic Trend!

Isn't this great? Weight Loss Surgery is going mainstream! There may be some cases where surgery is required but that is very unlikely. Once again instead of becoming interested in the root cause of obesity in our society and making a shift towards a healthier world, we are encouraging ignoring the cause and just focusing on the symptom of obesity. Health should be the priority, not some numeric number! So many people are compromising their health just to lose weight, when the most effective way to address obesity is the comprehensive approach that addresses exercise, food intake and awareness over negative thought patterns.

Weight-loss surgery, once a last resort for extremely overweight people, may soon become an option for those who are less heavy.

An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration will consider on Friday a request by Allergan, the pharmaceutical company, to significantly lower how obese someone must be to qualify for surgery using the company’s Lap-Band device, which restricts intake to the stomach.

On Wednesday, the F.D.A. acknowledged that a new study by the company showed that people in the proposed range of obesity who had the band experienced “statistically significant decreases in all measures of weight loss.”

If the agency approves the change, the number of Americans eligible for the Lap-Band operation could easily double, ensuring more sales for Allergan and probably more insurance coverage for such operations. But the proposed change, sought at a time when the obesity epidemic in the United States seems intractable, still leaves some people uneasy, in part because of side effects and failure rates. In addition, long-term weight reduction is hard to maintain.

“You’re talking about millions and millions of people who would meet these criteria,” said Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School. “Let’s make sure by the most rigorous research that this is safe and effective.”

A new generation of diet pills has failed to gain federal approval, limiting options for overweight Americans, and Allergan and other companies are betting that surgery will become more of a frontline option rather than a last resort.

Half of Europeans are overweight, a report shows

Congratulations to Europe! They are finally catching up to epidemic status we have already reached with regards to obesity in the USA. Obesity is so devastating because it is fundamental in it's effects. Exercise more! Stop treating your body like it is a garbage disposal. Obesity is simple to tackle!

Over half of adults living in the European Union countries are now overweight or obese according to a report.

The rate of obesity has more than doubled over the past 20 years in most EU member states, international experts say.

The UK comes out worst, shortly followed by Ireland and Malta, where a quarter of the population is obese.

World experts meet this week to discuss how to reverse the "worrying trend".

The European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) who compiled the Health at a Glance Europe 2010 report believe the key to success is encouraging children to adopt healthy habits.

Currently, one in seven children in the EU is overweight or obese - and the figures are set to rise even further.

Obesity in the Developing world follows USA Obesity to epidemic level

Obesity in the developing world is following right behind the outrageous rate of obesity in the USA and other developed countries. Obesity is a crime against humanity in my opinion, especially childhood obesity. How can we let our children get obese? It is disgusting...truly. Let us prevent obesity and get the kids back in shape with exercise and good healthy foods that are not sugary, not fried, and not loaded with saturated animal fat and cooked proteins.

These poor kids are growing up and they have NO CHANCE to be healthy in adulthood because they are on a fast track to diabetes and heart disease and social ills. It is really something that is so preventable that this country needs to take a hard look at the obvious food industry culprits and interest groups like Dairy and Beef/Chicken rendering companies. Lets all wake up and stop following the heard off the cliff and knock some sense into our selves and leaders to stand up against this. It is almost a national security issue if everyone in the country is Fat how can we even defend ourselves? we certainly can not defend ourselves against the trillions of dollars that will be wasted dealing with the health care ramifications of an entire nation of overweight and obese sick people.

and now as the NY Times reports... the rest of the world is following our sad example.


Developing countries should act now to head off their own "obesity epidemic", says a global policy group.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says obesity levels are rising fast.
In a report in the Lancet medical journal, it says low-income countries cannot cope with the health consequences of wide scale obesity.
Rates in Brazil and South Africa already outstrip the OECD average.
Increasing obesity in industrialised countries such as the UK and US has brought with it rises in heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
However, increasing prosperity in some developing countries has led to a rise in "Western" lifestyles.
Now the OECD warns that they are catching up fast in terms of obesity rates.
Across all the countries represented in the OECD, 50% of adults are overweight or obese.
Childhood obesity
Rates in the Russian Federation are only just below this, and while fewer than 20% of Indians are classed this way, and fewer than 30% of Chinese people, the body says things are worsening fast.

US Government Promoting Cheese and Warning against it at same time?

This is just fascinating. We need to take a hard look at the role food companies are playing in the overall degradation of our health. Yes it is peoples responsibility to eat for themselves, but the game is stacked unfairly against intelligence when the marketing and commercials come into play. It is not easy to resist the temptations and seductions of the campaigns.

And now the Federal Government wants to help market cheese? and is at the same time engaged in an anti-obesity drive that suggest cheese be drastically reduced from the diet?

If you want to fight childhood obesity, it is simple. Reduce or eliminate animal based foods from kids diets, eliminate refined sugars (as dangerous as cocaine in some ways), eliminate fried foods and fast foods. Exercise every day.

that is it! read below and see the details of government hypocrisy at its best!

Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies.

Then help arrived from an organization called Dairy Management. It teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign.
Consumers devoured the cheesier pizza, and sales soared by double digits. “This partnership is clearly working,” Brandon Solano, the Domino’s vice president for brand innovation, said in a statement to The New York Times.
But as healthy as this pizza has been for Domino’s, one slice contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease and is high in calories.
And Dairy Management, which has made cheese its cause, is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture — the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting.
Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese.
Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat; an ounce of many cheeses contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk.
When Michelle Obama implored restaurateurs in September to help fight obesity, she cited the proliferation of cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese. “I want to challenge every restaurant to offer healthy menu options,” she told the National Restaurant Association’s annual meeting.
But in a series of confidential agreements approved by agriculture secretaries in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Dairy Management has worked with restaurants to expand their menus with cheese-laden products.
Consider the Taco Bell steak quesadilla, with cheddar, pepper jack, mozzarella and a creamy sauce. “The item used an average of eight times more cheese than other items on their menu,” the Agriculture Department said in a report, extolling Dairy Management’s work — without mentioning that the quesadilla has more than three-quarters of the daily recommended level of saturated fat and sodium.
Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.
The organization’s activities, revealed through interviews and records, provide a stark example of inherent conflicts in the Agriculture Department’s historical roles as both marketer of agriculture products and America’s nutrition police.
In one instance, Dairy Management spent millions of dollars on research to support a national advertising campaign promoting the notion that people could lose weight by consuming more dairy products, records and interviews show. The campaign went on for four years, ending in 2007, even though other researchers — one paid by Dairy Management itself — found no such weight-loss benefits.
When the campaign was challenged as false, government lawyers defended it, saying the Agriculture Department “reviewed, approved and continually oversaw” the effort.
Dr. Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health and a former member of the federal government’s nutrition advisory committee, said: “The U.S.D.A. should not be involved in these programs that are promoting foods that we are consuming too much of already. A small amount of good-flavored cheese can be compatible with a healthy diet, but consumption in the U.S. is enormous and way beyond what is optimally healthy.”
The Agriculture Department declined to make top officials available for interviews for this article, and Dairy Management would not comment. In answering written questions, the department said that dairy promotion was intended to bolster farmers and rural economies, and that its oversight left Dairy Management’s board with “significant independence” in deciding how best to support those interests.
The department acknowledged that cheese is high in saturated fat, but said that lower milk consumption had made cheese an important source of calcium.
“When eaten in moderation and with attention to portion size, cheese can fit into a low-fat, healthy diet,” the department said.
In its reports to Congress, however, the Agriculture Department tallies Dairy Management’s successes in millions of pounds of cheese served.