Health and Fitness Blog

MOSCOW (AFP) –
Health officials have ordered Russians to adopt a back-to-basics diet for the economic crisis to stop their weight ballooning after a decade of indulgence during the boom years.

A report published this week by the Federal Consumer Protection Service said Russian men and women have gained two kilos (four pounds), while children put on almost a kilo over the past ten years.

The recommendations come as the deepening economic crisis is expected to reshape Russia’s eating habits in favour of cheaper calorie-rich but nutrient-deficient staples like bread and potatoes.

“When it comes to obesity, Russian women are among the leaders in European countries,” Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service warned in the report entitled Healthy Nutrition on the Cheap.

The report also published by government newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta presents a set of guidelines cobbled together by Onishchenko and a leading top nutrition institute on how to stay slim despite the temptation of eating cheap but calorie-rich foods.

The economic boom saw Russians develop a taste for foreign delicacies and US fast food after years surviving on the notoriously dull meat and potatoes cuisine of the Soviet Union.

Onishchenko encouraged Russians to cut down on fizzy drinks in favour of milk and extolled the delights of healthy home-made meals as opposed to ready-made or junk food.

“We are losing our culinary traditions,” the doctor lamented.

“I am very sorry to say that by losing the skills of traditional meals cooking we are loosing part of our culture at the same time.”

Russians are recommended to start their day with porridge, have traditional bortsch beet soup, a vegetable salad and fish for lunch and not to forget a glass of kefir (sour milk) before bed.

The recommended diet includes approximate prices and says that an adult Russian male can enjoy healthy eating on just 2,780 rubles (77 dollars) per month, while Russian women can make do on just 2,354 rubles (66 dollars).

Source

Low fat, low carb, high protein – there’s a diet plan of every flavor. And if you’re one of the millions of Americans who struggle with weight, you’ve probably tried them all, likely with little success. That wouldn’t surprise Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of a new study published in the Feb. 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, whose findings confirm what a growing body of weight-loss evidence has already suggested: one diet is no better than the next when it comes to weight loss. It doesn’t matter where your calories come from, as long as you’re eating less. (Read about environmentally friendly food.)

“We have a really simple and practical message for people: it’s not so much the type of diet you eat,” says Sacks. “It’s how much you put in your mouth.”

In the analysis of 811 obese patients from Massachusetts and Louisiana, participants were randomly assigned to one of four heart-healthy diets: low fat or high fat, with either average or high levels of protein. All four regimens also included high amounts of whole grains, fruits and vegetables and substituted saturated fat, found in foods such as butter and meat, with unsaturated fat, found in vegetable oil and nuts. The participants were encouraged to exercise 90 minutes a week. (See the top 10 food trends of 2008.)

On average, the study participants lost about 13 lb. after six months of dieting, or about 7% of their starting weight, regardless of which diet plan they followed. At the one-year mark, the dieters had regained some of the lost weight, and after two years, average weight loss was about 9 lb. Only about 15% of participants were able to lose 10% of their body weight or more. Across the board, however, patients lowered their risk of diabetes and reduced blood levels of bad cholesterol (LDL) while increasing good cholesterol (HDL) and overall heart health.

Catherine Loria, one of the study’s co-authors and a nutritional epidemiologist with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the study, was encouraged by the findings. “People do have to choose heart-healthy foods,” she says, but “I think the beauty of the study is that they have a lot of flexibility in terms of the dietary approach.”

But that’s where the trouble begins. It’s hard enough to figure out what to eat. Eating less of it is even harder. Researchers had hoped to get study participants to eat 750 calories less than they expended each day – an objective that proved unsustainable. Dieters adhered to the initial plan for the first several weeks, but by the six-month mark, they were consuming only 225 calories less than they expended – about a third of the goal – according to a calculation based on overall weight loss. “It’s very difficult to reduce your calories enough to really sustain a lot of weight loss,” Loria says. (See pictures of facial yoga.)

One failure of most diet plans is that people get hungry and quit, says Sacks, who acknowledges that the sudden reduction of 750 calories in his study was perhaps too steep. “I think what that teaches us is that maybe it’s better to make a more gradual change in intake,” says Sacks. “That’s what I recommend to my patients: let’s try to pick a gradual or realistic reduction in calories that’s not going to make you really hungry a lot and that you can sustain day after day.”

But eating less, however simple it may sound, is hardly a one-man job. Some nutrition experts argue that the balance of responsibility needs to fall more heavily on society at large. Martjin Katan, a professor of nutrition and health at Amsterdam’s VU University, wrote an accompanying editorial that analyzed the merits of the diet study. He suggests that focusing on individual diet plans of any kind may be misguided, and that only community-wide change will truly be able to stem the tide of obesity. He points to a small town in France that tapped all of its residents to solve the problem – building more outdoor-sports facilities and creating walking routes, hosting cooking classes and even intervening with at-risk families. After five years, obesity among children was down to 8.8%, less than half the rate of neighboring towns. That success, he writes, “suggests that we may need a new approach to preventing and to treating obesity and that it must be a total-environment approach.”

It’s a useful lesson for American adults, two-thirds of whom are overweight or obese. Long-term weight loss has proved frustratingly elusive for many obese individuals, but study after study has shown that community and peer support help people take off weight – and keep it off. In this study, the participants who took advantage of group and individual counseling offered as part of the diets had far greater success than those who chose to go it alone. Over the course of two years, participants who went to at least two-thirds of the counseling sessions dropped about 22 lb., 13 lb. more than the average of the entire study population. “Losing weight and sustaining it for two years is difficult,” Sacks says. “To help people do that, they need some level of support to keep their motivation and focus.”

But the bottom line, according to most obesity experts, is to set realistic goals. Expect what is achievable: a 250-lb. person isn’t likely to slim down to supermodel proportions in her lifetime, but she may be able to lose 10 or 20 lb. A moderate 5% or 10% reduction in body weight can significantly improve health, by lowering cholesterol and the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. For many doctors who work with obese patients, the goal is not thinness but well-being – and, ultimately for the patient, self-acceptance.

As for the secret to losing weight? There is none. “It’s basic physiology,” Loria says. “Eat fewer calories than you expend.”

See 9 kid foods to avoid.

See pictures of what makes you eat more food.

View this article on Time.com

Related articles on Time.com:

• What’s the Best Diet? Eating Less Food
• Do Diet Foods Lead to Weight Gain?
• Which Are Worse: Calories from Carbs or Fat?
• Can Sugar Substitutes Make You Fat?
• The Myth of Moderate Exercise

Source

LOS ANGELES – Low-fat, low-carb or high-protein? The kind of diet doesn’t matter, scientists say. All that really counts is cutting calories and sticking with it, according to a federal study that followed people for two years. However, participants had trouble staying with a single approach that long and the weight loss was modest for most.

As the world grapples with rising obesity, millions have turned to popular diets like Atkins, Zone and Ornish that tout the benefits of one nutrient over another.

Some previous studies have found that low carbohydrate diets like Atkins work better than a traditional low-fat diet. But the new research found that the key to losing weight boiled down to a basic rule — calories in, calories out.

“The hidden secret is it doesn’t matter if you focus on low-fat or low-carb,” said Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the research.

Limiting the calories you consume and burning off more calories with exercise is key, she said.

The study, which appears in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, was led by Harvard School of Public Health and Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana.

Researchers randomly assigned 811 overweight adults to one of four diets, each of which contained different levels of fat, protein and carbohydrates.

Though the diets were twists on commercial plans, the study did not directly compare popular diets. The four diets contained healthy fats, were high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables and were low in cholesterol.

Nearly two-thirds of the participants were women. Each dieter was encouraged to slash 750 calories a day from their diet, exercise 90 minutes a week, keep an online food diary and meet regularly with diet counselors to chart their progress.

There was no winner among the different diets; reduction in weight and waist size were similar in all groups.

People lost 13 pounds on average at six months, but all groups saw their weight creep back up after a year. At two years, the average weight loss was about 9 pounds while waistlines shrank an average of 2 inches. Only 15 percent of dieters achieved a weight-loss reduction of 10 percent or more of their starting weight.

Dieters who got regular counseling saw better results. Those who attended most meetings shed more pounds than those who did not — 22 pounds compared with the average 9 pound loss.

Lead researcher Dr. Frank Sacks of Harvard said a restricted calorie diet gives people greater food choices, making the diet less monotonous.

“They just need to focus on how much they’re eating,” he said.

Sacks said the trick is finding a healthy diet that is tasty and that people will stick with over time.

Before Debbie Mayer, 52, enrolled in the study, she was a “stress eater” who would snack all day and had no sense of portion control. Mayer used to run marathons in her 30s, but health problems prevented her from doing much exercise in recent years.

Mayer tinkered with different diets — Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach — with little success.

“I’ve been battling my weight all my life. I just needed more structure,” said Mayer, of Brockton, Mass., who works with the elderly.

Mayer was assigned to a low-fat, high-protein diet with 1,400 calories a day. She started measuring her food and went back to the gym. The 5-foot Mayer started at 179 pounds and dropped 50 pounds to 129 pounds by the end of the study. She now weighs 132 and wants to shed a few more pounds.

Another study volunteer, Rudy Termini, a 69-year-old retiree from Cambridge, Mass., credits keeping a food diary for his 22-pound success. Termini said before participating in the study he would wolf down 2,500 calories a day. But sticking to an 1,800-calorie high-fat, average protein diet meant no longer eating an entire T-bone steak for dinner. Instead, he now eats only a 4-ounce steak.

“I was just oblivious to how many calories I was having,” said the 5-foot-11-inch Termini, who dropped from 195 to 173 pounds. “I really used to just eat everything and anything in sight.”

Dr. David Katz of the Yale Prevention Research Center and author of several weight control books, said the results should not be viewed as an endorsement of fad diets that promote one nutrient over another.

The study compared high quality, heart healthy diets and “not the gimmicky popular versions,” said Katz, who had no role in the study. Some popular low-carb diets tend to be low in fiber and have a relatively high intake of saturated fat, he said.

Other experts were bothered that the dieters couldn’t keep the weight off even with close monitoring and a support system.

“Even these highly motivated, intelligent participants who were coached by expert professionals could not achieve the weight losses needed to reverse the obesity epidemic,” Martijn Katan of Amsterdam’s Free University wrote in an accompanying editorial.

______

On the Net:

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

Source

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 25 (HealthDay News) — Being obese at age 18 increases
the risk of premature death in adulthood as much as smoking more than 10
cigarettes a day, according to Swedish researchers.

Dr. Martin Neovius of the Karolinska Institute and colleagues analyzed
data from more than 45,000 18-year-olds who underwent military
conscription tests in which their body mass index (BMI) and smoking status
were recorded. The men were followed for an average of 38 years.

During the follow-up period, 2,897 of the men died. The incidence of
death was highest among obese men and lowest among those of normal weight.
Compared with those who had a normal weight at age 18, those who had been
overweight were about a third more likely to die early, whereas those who
were obese were more than twice as likely to die prematurely.

Being underweight did not increase the risk, but being seriously
underweight (BMI of less than 17) increased the risk of premature death as
much as being overweight did. The study also found that heavy smokers were
more than twice as likely as nonsmokers to die prematurely and that heavy
smokers who were obese were almost five times more likely to die early
than were normal weight nonsmokers.

However, the researchers did not find a statistically significant
interaction between heavy smoking and obesity, which they said means that
being overweight at age 18 increases the risk of premature death,
regardless of smoking status.

The study was published online Feb. 25 in BMJ.

In many countries, increasing numbers of adolescents smoke and are
overweight or obese. The researchers concluded that “overweight, obesity
and smoking among adolescents remain important targets for intensified
public health initiatives.”

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases has more about the health risks of being overweight.

Source

Low-fat, low-carb, high-protein – there’s a diet plan of every flavor. And if you’re one of the millions of Americans who struggle with weight, you’ve probably tried them all, likely with little success. That wouldn’t surprise Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of a new study published in the February 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, whose findings confirm what a growing body of weight-loss evidence has already suggested: one diet is no better than the next when it comes to weight loss. It doesn’t matter where your calories come from, as long as you’re eating less. (Read about environmentally friendly food.)

“We have a really simple and practical message for people – it’s not so much the type of diet you eat,” says Sacks. “It’s how much you put in your mouth.”

In the analysis of 811 obese patients from Massachusetts and Louisiana, participants were randomly assigned to one of four heart-healthy diets: low fat or high fat, with either average or high levels of protein. All four regimens also included high amounts of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and substituted saturated fat, found in foods such as butter and meat, with unsaturated fat, found in vegetable oil and nuts. The participants were encouraged to exercise 90 minutes a week.

On average, the study participants lost about 13 lbs. after six months of dieting, or about 7% of their starting weight, regardless of which diet plan they followed. At the year mark, the dieters had regained some of the lost weight, and after two years, average weight loss was about 9 lbs. Only about 15% of participants were able to lose 10% of their body weight or more. Across the board, however, patients lowered their risk of diabetes and reduced blood levels of bad cholesterol (LDL) while increasing good cholesterol (HDL) and overall heart health.

Catherine Loria, one of the study’s co-authors and a nutritional epidemiologist with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the study, was encouraged by the findings. “People do have to choose heart-healthy foods,” she says, but “I think the beauty of the study is that they have a lot of flexibility in terms of the dietary approach.”

But that’s where the trouble begins. It’s hard enough to figure out what to eat. Eating less of it is even harder. Researchers had hoped to get study participants to eat 750 calories fewer than they expended each day – an objective that proved impossible. Dieters adhered to the initial plan for the first several weeks, but by the six-month mark, they were consuming only 225 calories less than they expended – about a third of the goal – according to a calculation based on overall weight loss. “It’s very difficult to reduce your calories enough to really sustain a lot of weight loss,” Loria says.

One failure of most diet plans is that people get hungry and quit, says Sacks, who acknowledges that the sudden reduction of 750 calories in his study was perhaps too steep. “I think what that teaches us is that maybe it’s better to make a more gradual change in intake,” says Sacks. “That’s what I recommend to my patients, let’s try to pick a gradual or realistic reduction in calories that’s not going to make you really hungry a lot and that you can sustain day after day.”

But eating less, however simple it sounds, is hardly a one-man job. Some nutrition experts argue that the balance of responsibility needs to fall more heavily on society at large. Martjin Katan, a professor of nutrition and health at Amsterdam’s VU University, wrote an accompanying editorial that analyzed the merits of the diet study. He suggests that focusing on individual diet plans of any kind may be misguided, and that only community-wide change will truly be able to stem the tide of obesity. He points to a small town in France that tapped all of its residents to solve the problem – building more outdoor sports facilities and creating walking routes, hosting cooking classes and even intervening with at-risk families. After five years, obesity among children was down to 8.8%, less than half the rate of neighboring towns. That success, he writes, “suggests that we may need a new approach to preventing and to treating obesity and that it must be a total-environment approach.”

It’s a useful lesson for American adults, two-thirds of whom are overweight or obese. Long-term weight loss has proved frustratingly elusive for many obese individuals, but study after study has shown the benefit of community and peer support for helping people take off weight – and keep it off. In this study, the participants who took advantage of group and individual counseling offered as part of the diets had far greater success than those who chose to go it alone. Over the course of two years, participants who went to at least two-thirds of the counseling sessions dropped about 22 lbs., 13 lbs. over the average of the entire study population. “Losing weight and sustaining it for two years is difficult,” Sacks says. “To help people do that, they need some level of support to keep their motivation and focus.”

But the bottom line, according to most obesity experts, is to set realistic goals. Expect what is achievable: a 250-lb. person isn’t likely to slim down to supermodel proportions in her lifetime, but she may be able to lose 10 or 20 lbs. A moderate 5% or 10% reduction in body weight can significantly improve health, by lowering cholesterol and the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. For many doctors who work with obese patients, the goal is not thinness, but well-being – and, ultimately for the patient, self-acceptance.

As for the secret to losing weight? There is none. “It’s basic physiology,” Loria says. “Eat fewer calories than you expend.”

See 9 kid foods to avoid.

See pictures of what makes you eat more food.

View this article on Time.com

Related articles on Time.com:

• Do Diet Foods Lead to Weight Gain?
• Which Are Worse: Calories from Carbs or Fat?
• The Myth of Moderate Exercise
• Can Sugar Substitutes Make You Fat?
• Diet Bake-Off

Source

PARIS (AFP) –
Simply being overweight, but not obese, from an early age boosts the risk of premature death by a third — as much as smoking up to 10 cigarettes a day, researchers in Sweden reported Wednesday.

People who are clinically obese by the age of 18 more than double that risk, putting themselves in the same danger zone as long-term heavy smokers of normal weight, they found.

And combining the two factors accumulates the risk: an obese heavy smoker, for example, is nearly five times as likely to die prematurely than a non-smoker who is neither too thin nor too fat.

At least a billion people in the world are overweight, and nearly a third of them are obese, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Obesity rates have soared over the last three decades, especially among children.

Earlier studies have shown that being excessively fat shortens lifespan and leads to increased rates of chronic disease such as diabetes and arteriosclerosis.

But researchers have disagreed sharply up to now on whether being above ideal weight without crossing the line to obesity takes years off one’s life.

Nor have previous studies directly compared the impact on mortality of smoking and excess weight.

The study designed by Martin Neovius of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm goes a long way to settling the debate, and shows clearly for the first time that being too heavy can be as dangerous as smoking a couple of packs a day.

Neovius and colleagues analysed data for 45,000 men who underwent mandatory military conscription tests in Sweden in 1969 and 1970 at the age of 18.

Data included participants’ smoking habits, and their body-mass index (BMI) — weight in kilogrammes divided by the square of one’s height in meters.

A BMI of 25-to-30 indicates being overweight, while above 30 means one is obese. The range of normal weight is 18.5-to-24.9.

The follow up period was, on average, 38 years. During that time, 2,897 subjects died.

The lowest death rate, as expected, was among non-smokers of normal weight. But researchers were surprised to find that being obese carried a greater risk of premature death than being a heavy smoker.

Even more startling, however, were the dangers of being overweight.

“What we show is that for the overweight, there is a significantly increased risk of premature death, similar to smoking one-to-ten cigarettes a day,” said Neovius in a phone interview.

Two key studies in the United States — one at the Center for Disease Control and the famous Nurses’ Health Study at Harvard — had arrived at opposite conclusions on this question.

“Our results confirm the Harvard findings,” said Neovius, whose research was published in the British Medical Journal.

The two studies are highly complementary, he added. “We find exactly the same in men and they did in women,” erasing any doubts as to possible differences across the sexes.

The Swedish study did find, however, that being severely underweight — a BMI of under 17 — carried about the same risk of early death as being overweight or a light smoker.

Policy makers should take note of these results, and increase awareness of the risks related to being too fat, or too thin, Neovius said.

“Anti-smoking campaigns have been very successful. But we don’t have any good preventative programmes for overweight and obesity,” he said of Sweden, adding that the situation elsewhere is comparable.

Source

LONDON (Reuters) –
People who were obese at the age of 18 are twice as likely to die prematurely compared to those who were normal-weight teenagers, Swedish researchers said on Wednesday.

They also found that men who had been overweight at 18 were one-third more likely to die prematurely compared to their normal-weight peers.

The study of 45,920 men over an average 38 years underlines the dangers of being overweight and the need to tackle a growing obesity epidemic.

About 400 million people around the world are classified by the World Health Organization as obese, including 20 million children under the age of 5.

“Obesity and overweight were as hazardous as heavy and light smoking,” Martin Neovius of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and his colleagues wrote in the British Medical Journal.

“The obesity pandemic seems to affect children and adolescents more than adults.”

Neovius and his team analyzed the cause of death of more than 45,000 men who had mandatory military conscription tests in Sweden at the age of 18.

All had their body mass index (BMI) measured and were asked whether they smoked. For the 3,000 who died during the 38-year follow up, the incidence of death was highest among the obese.

Heavy smokers, considered those who puff on 10 or more cigarettes daily, were twice as likely to have died prematurely compared to non-smokers, the researchers said.

Since 1969, the number of overweight men in Sweden has tripled and those who are obese has risen five-fold, the researchers noted. This highlights an urgent need for public health programmes to deal with the problem, they said.

“The global obesity epidemic and smoking among adolescents remain important targets for intensified public health initiatives,” Neovius and colleagues wrote.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Maggie Fox and Katie Nguyen)

Source

LONDON (Reuters) –
German scientists said on Sunday they have shown how a gene long associated with obesity might make people fat, a finding that could lead to new drugs to help control weight.

Mice without the FTO gene did not become obese and had less fat tissue overall because they burned off more calories even though they moved less and ate more, according to the study published in the journal Nature.

FTO has been long linked to obesity. Studies have shown people with two copies of the “obese” version of the gene on average weigh nearly 7 lbs (3 kg) more and are about 70 percent more likely to be obese than those with other versions.

People and mice are similar genetically.

“So, this work provides a crucial piece of evidence supporting the notion that the FTO gene itself is likely to be involved in the effects of common human genetic variants on body fat,” Stephen O’Rahilly of the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.

“This finding will promote research into the development of drugs that modulate FTO activity.”

Obesity, which raises the risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart problems, has increasingly become a global problem with people exercising less and leading more sedentary lifestyles.

The World Health Organization classifies about 400 million people around the world as obese, and the numbers are increasing.

In their study, Ulrich Ruther and colleagues at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany took a group of mice and knocked out, or inactivated, the FTO gene to see if they could figure out why the gene might make animals, and people, fat.

Animals lacking the gene were thin because they spontaneously burned off many calories, suggesting FTO plays a direct role in controlling metabolism, they reported.

“The human FTO gene has previously been shown to be linked to human obesity, however, this research helps unlock the complex interplay between factors expressed in the brain that control both appetite and metabolism,” said David Cameron-Smith, an obesity expert at Deakin University in Australia.

“A cure, genetic or pharmaceutical, for human obesity is many years away, although any new knowledge on how the brain controls hunger and growth will help solve the complex disease.”

Source

LONDON (Reuters) –
German scientists said on Sunday they had shown how a gene long associated with obesity might make people fat, a finding that could lead to new drugs to help control weight.

Mice without the FTO gene did not become obese and had less fat tissue overall because they burned off more calories even though they moved less and ate more, according to the study published in the journal Nature.

FTO has been long linked to obesity. Studies have shown people with two copies of the “obese” version of the gene on average weigh nearly 7 lbs (3 kg) more and are about 70 percent more likely to be obese than those with other versions.

People and mice are similar genetically.

“So, this work provides a crucial piece of evidence supporting the notion that the FTO gene itself is likely to be involved in the effects of common human genetic variants on body fat,” Stephen O’Rahilly of the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.

“This finding will promote research into the development of drugs that modulate FTO activity.”

Obesity, which raises the risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart problems, has increasingly become a global problem with people exercising less and leading more sedentary lifestyles.

The World Health Organization classifies about 400 million people around the world as obese, and the numbers are increasing.

In their study, Ulrich Ruther and colleagues at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany took a group of mice and knocked out, or inactivated, the FTO gene to see if they could figure out why the gene might make animals, and people, fat.

Animals lacking the gene were thin because they spontaneously burned off many calories, suggesting FTO plays a direct role in controlling metabolism, they reported.

“The human FTO gene has previously been shown to be linked to human obesity, however, this research helps unlock the complex interplay between factors expressed in the brain that control both appetite and metabolism,” said David Cameron-Smith, an obesity expert at Deakin University in Australia.

“A cure, genetic or pharmaceutical, for human obesity is many years away, although any new knowledge on how the brain controls hunger and growth will help solve the complex disease.”

(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Maggie Fox)

Source

THURSDAY, Feb. 19 (HealthDay News) — In what they called a “landmark
agreement,” former President Bill Clinton and the American Heart
Association announced Thursday the launch of a national initiative on
childhood obesity, aimed at getting up to 6 million American kids covered
for
routine visits to both primary care physicians and dietitians.

“I think we want the children of America to know, No. 1, that we want
them to be healthy, we want them to grow up healthy, and we want them to
start now,” Clinton told reporters at his foundation’s headquarters in New
York City.

The new collaboration, which Clinton called “a really big deal,” links
medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the
American Dietetic Association with insurance companies such as Aetna,
WellPoint, Blue Cross of North Carolina and of Massachusetts and private
companies like PepsiCo, Owens Corning and Paychex. This, Clinton said, is
“the first time our three stakeholders have come together to tackle
childhood obesity in a comprehensive way.”

The current initiative aims to address the obesity-related healthcare
needs of almost 1 million children in the program’s first year, by
reimbursing doctors and registered dietitians for providing health care
and in-depth nutritional counseling to kids on an ongoing basis. In
addition, participating companies will offer their employees access to the
initiative’s benefits. The new alliance will also offer parents
educational and nutritional information on tackling childhood obesity.

The planned coverage is set to ratchet up to approximately 6.2 million
children (25 percent of all overweight American children) by the end of
three years.

Observing that millions of American families simply don’t know where to
turn for help on their child’s weight issues — or just can’t afford the
help when they find it — Clinton said he hoped that the new initiative
would address what for many parents is “somewhere between a problem and a
nightmare.”

The new effort, called the “Alliance Healthcare Initiative,” is the
latest venture of The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, created in 2005
by the AHA and the William J. Clinton Foundation. In 2006, the Alliance
helped shepherd an agreement among soft drink manufacturers that
established sweetener, calorie and fat guidelines, and limited the sale of
sodas in elementary, middle, and high schools attended by 35 million
American students.

For his part, AHA president Dr. Tim Gardner described the new
initiative as “a very historic moment” and one that is needed as the
nation’s medical system becomes increasingly burdened by obesity-related
costs amid growing economic hardship.

He noted that the direct health care costs for the treatment of
children who are already overweight or obese currently tops $14 billion
annually, and, overall, obesity costs the nation an estimated $117 billion
annually in both healthcare costs and lost productivity.

“We’re here today because there is an obesity epidemic in this
country,” Gardner said. “One in three teens in this country are overweight
or obese.”

And, he added, “there’s a risk that this generation will be the first
in our history to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.”

More information

For additional information on childhood nutrition, visit the American Heart Association.

Source