If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If Coca-Cola is serious about making a genuine contribution to solving the nation's obesity epidemic, here are seven steps that will put substance behind their latest campaign.
The headlines this time of year usually tell us how to shed pounds fast and get healthy with a pill, a gadget, or a procedure. This year, however, the message has been slightly different.
Many kids today know more about their iPhones, iPods and iPads than they do about their own feelings and needs. If your child is one of the millions who struggles with overeating, here are some tips for you to consider.
You would think that half a century would be enough time for a company that brands itself as a nutritional innovator to keep up with the science, but in its new anti-obesity commercial, "Coming Together," Coke continues avoiding the real issues of obesity.
While it's encouraging to see so many community leaders taking the issue of childhood obesity to heart, ultimately, this is a parent's responsibility. If you want your children to be healthy and fit, you need to set boundaries and be the best role model you can.
You would have to be living in a bubble to have missed the news that Beyonce cut a reported $50 million deal with PepsiCo. Although the deal may meet Beyonce's and Pepsi's mutually-beneficial marketing needs, it does not serve the best interests of the U.S. public.
The question is, will parents use the device in the right way? Tracking a child's activity through the day could be a slippery slope when it comes to a child's self-esteem.
"Music and food have a similar affect on us. They are both nourishing-make us happy, give us energy, are soothing, help us focus, improve our memory, and have the power to heal."
Policies that gain controversy in their engagement with obesity are helpful for making a very public (yet uncomfortably avoided) issue further visible. It's hard to talk about obesity, private or public. Policies like the soda rule can be vehicles for those discussions to take place.
Save the Children has not been involved in the gun control issue in the past -- our work has focused on providing education, health and emergency relief services to children and families living in poverty in the United States and around the world -- but in the aftermath of Newtown, we are taking action.
Efforts aimed at obesity prevention are well underway, but we are still a nation very uncomfortable with paying for services that could help treat the two-thirds of Americans who carry excess weight.
The best resolution we can make at this time of year is not merely for our own personal fitness but for a fitter society, beginning with our kids. And it's starting to look like a resolution we can keep.
My biggest concern is that solely focusing on weight impedes the health movement's progress. Such a clinical and quantitative frame gives very little thought to -- and leaves no room for a conversation about -- socio-political and environmental factors that pose a threat to our health.
If you live in the U.S., you are absolutely bombarded with the idea that being overweight is bad for your health. This repetition leaves one with the idea that being overweight is the same thing as being unhealthy, something that is simply not true.
Advice on how to lose weight weighs heavily on us. Wherever we turn, we hear, see or read the depressing message that our health will suffer if we don't trim down.
At the population level, epidemic obesity is incontrovertibly established as a clear and all-but-omnipresent danger. It is absurd to suggest otherwise. And it's those who do so -- who play ping-pong with science -- who frighten the hell out of me.
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