Michelle Obama announced her far-reaching, nationwide campaign called "Let's Move" on Tuesday February 9, 2010. She referred to Let’s Move as a "very ambitious" program to end the American plague of childhood obesity in a single generation. Per Mrs. Obama, "We want to eliminate this problem of childhood obesity in a generation. We want to get that done."
This far-reaching, nationwide campaign calls for a myriad initiatives that target what Obama calls four key pillars: Getting parents more informed about nutrition and exercise, improving the quality of food in schools, making healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families, and focusing more on physical education.
If you are not familiar with the statistics on childhood obesity - one in three kids are overweight or obese, and the U.S. spends $150 billion a year treating obesity-related illnesses. The First Lady notes, "There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue," she said. "This is going to require an effort on everyone's part."
I think we all know that there is no separating children’s problems from the problems of the family. Children, in large part, simply reflect the health or sickness of the family, and while our First Lady’s call to end childhood obesity in one generation is the right thing to do it cannot get done until the adults in families throughout America start to take charge of their health and fight obesity.
Let us follow our First Lady’s lead to start getting serious about taking charge of our health and doing whatever it takes to deal with obesity in our lives and within our families. To paraphrase a famous quote, as I see, every day of our lives we do one of two things: we either build health in our bodies or we build disease. There is no third option.
Which one are you doing every day – building health or building disease? What examples are we setting for our children?
I encourage you to think about these issues and to try every day of your life to build health for yourself and avoid suffering from preventable disease.
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Every good wish to you and your family!
Dr. Jeff Brown
Tags: Michelle Obama Childhood Obesity
