Childhood Obesity Task Force Created

Janet Adamy, of the Wall Street Journal online, reports that First Lady Michelle Obama has gotten some help from her husband in the fight against childhood obesity. This morning President Barack Obama signed a memorandum creating a new task force on childhood obesity.

The members of this new task force will have ninety days to report back to the administration with their recommendations on how to deal with the problem. Additionally, later today the First Lady will be holding an event of her own to launch “her campaign to fight childhood obesity, a cause that is becoming her top policy priority.”

This afternoon Mrs. Obama will announce plans that have been months in the making that will combat obesity through a focus on nutrition and physical activity. As Adamy reports, the Surgeon General Regina Benjamin wants the conversation to be about being healthy, rather than obtaining “a particular weight or dress size[.]”

‘"As America's family doctor, I want to change the national conversation from a negative one about obesity and illness to a positive conversation about being healthy and being fit,’ Dr. Benjamin says in a message posted on her Web site. That means Americans should eat nutritious foods, exercise regularly ‘and have fun doing it,’ she says.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that while obesity rates rose “rapidly” during the 1980s and 1990s, but recent figures show this has slowed. Still, roughly “two-thirds of Americans are counted as either overweight or obese,” reports the National Center for Health Statistics.

Adamy writes that Mrs. Obama’s plan has four “planks.” They are improving nutrition and physical education in the nation’s schools; promote physical activity in community planning (via bike and walking trails); improve access to healthy food; and create more clearly-defined nutrition information on packaging.

These plans could affect everyone from public school students to mayors to food companies to America’s farmland. While some states and cities already require, or have put in place similar reforms, federal reforms will change the game for the food industry on a national scale.

To read the Wall Street Journal article on this effort, click here.

Posted: 02/09/10