The road map to solving childhood obesity

• Children's Health • • Obesity • May 17, 10

White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes says first lady Michelle Obama is speaking quite literally when she says the goal of her Let’s Move campaign is “solving the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.”

“That is literally achievable,” Barnes said in an interview for the new POLITICO video series, “The Politics of America’s Youth.” “In the 1970s, about 5 percent of the nation’s child and adolescent population was considered obese. Now, that’s shot up to 20 percent. We set the goal of 2030. So we’ll go from 20 percent childhood obesity to 5 percent childhood obesity by the year 2030.”

The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, appointed by President Barack Obama, this month delivered a 124-page Report to the President, with 70 recommendations in five areas: early childhood, empowering parents and caregivers, health food in schools, access to healthful, affordable food and increasing physical activity.

Barnes is a policy architect of Let’s Move, a road map for federal, state and local governments, as well as the private sector, to engage individuals and communities. The audience, she said, includes “parents, doctors, nurses, the food and beverage industry and workers who provide school lunches.

“We want to get back down to those 1970 levels, and we know that in doing that, we’ll be able to solve a whole host of other health-related concerns,” Barnes said. “We spend about $150 billion annually on diseases that emanate out of obesity, like heart disease and diabetes. So, if we can catch this on the front end, then we can solve those problems and prevent them from occurring on the back end.”

Barnes, a native of Richmond, Va., has one of the West Wing’s most expansive portfolios: She was a leader of a conference call for the press last week on the administration’s response to the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and she’s responsible for education and health care. She was chief counsel for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the Senate Judiciary Committee and was head of policy at the Center for American Progress before becoming senior domestic policy adviser to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

In an interview with C-SPAN in 2007, Barnes said her first memory of political activism was selling cupcakes for the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern.

“Healthy cupcakes,” she jokes now. “We’re not trying to eliminate and eradicate cupcakes and cookies from people’s lives. Everyone enjoys that, or most people do — I know that I do. This is an issue of balance, and we want to make sure that people are active, that children are active, that they’re eating fresh foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, so that they are conscious of leading healthy lives, and they are, indeed, leading healthy lives. A cupcake every once in a while is actually probably a nice thing.”

Barnes said she stays fit, in part, by running up and down the steps of the West Wing and by practicing yoga.

“I go to the gym,” she added. “I try to walk home when I can. All those things are really important — building them into my life in a natural way but also trying to find the time to do it.”

Here are some of the exchanges from the interview, conducted in an ornate room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:

How do you defuse criticism that you’re telling people how to raise their children?

“The first lady started talking about this issue in the context of the White House garden and working with young people from local elementary schools, watching them work in the garden, plant the plants, harvest the garden, cook the food. [And she talked] about it from the perspective of being a parent — her own experience with her daughters and talking to their doctor. I think people can relate to that. And we know that people across the ideological spectrum — Republicans to Democrats, moderates to independents, all regions of the country — recognize that this is a serious problem. ... It’s inclusive, and our job is to empower people — by letting parents know that 60 minutes a day of physical activity is really important for your child in terms of leading a healthy life and not being obese. That’s not telling them what to do — that’s providing them with a piece of information.”

How did the White House decide to make this a formal campaign?

“It really evolved from those early conversations around the garden — also, recognizing just how important this is. And, quite frankly, with the president’s initiative around health care reform, we recognized that we have to make sure that people get quality and affordable health care, and by focusing on prevention and wellness, that’s something very, very important that we can do to reduce costs and to make sure that people lead active, better lives.”

How did the first lady decide to take it on personally?

“I remember talking to her during the transition, and several of us went to meet with her right before the Inauguration. We just started talking about this issue and what was happening in communities, the fact that they are now talking about diseases that children had that, 20 years ago, doctors didn’t even see in children — Type 2 diabetes that didn’t exist in children before, all as a result of childhood obesity. So, knowing the facts, combined with personal experience, combined with a real effort to address the health care issues that are affecting our country, all of those issues came together and served as a catalyst for this campaign.”

What about adult obesity?

“We know that children are wonderful ambassadors to their entire family. So once a child starts to get out and they’re more active, they start to eat healthy foods, whether they’re at school or, you know, as a snack, and they come home and say, ‘You know, I really enjoy eating oranges, or I really love asparagus,’ then parents start to respond to that, and I think you watch the entire family’s meal start to change.”

One focus of the campaign is “food deserts.”

“One of our important goals deals with access to healthy foods and vegetables in communities. There are some communities that are considered ‘food deserts,’ places where people can’t get fresh, nutritious food, where there isn’t a grocery store in a mile or two within a person’s home. It’s both an urban and a rural problem. When people think about rural America, they think about farms and access to really wonderful, healthy foods, but there are food deserts in rural areas, as well. The president included in his budget an initiative to use public funds to leverage even larger private dollars to put the grocery stores in communities where they don’t exist and also some really creative and innovative ways — for example, mobile grocery stores, where you’re moving those into communities where there’s not a lot of population density.”

The campaign has also talked about infant health.

“One of our important pillars is making sure that children have a healthy start in life, that their mothers are getting prenatal care, that they’re able to breast-feed. More and more women are considering breast-feeding, because we know it’s such a natural and healthy way to start providing nutrients to children without a lot of sugar and other products that they don’t need at a young age. I think there’s more and more receptivity to [breast-feeding], particularly as people get the information, get the facts.”

What can children do themselves?

“We want to make sure that children have the ability to bike to school or to walk to school. That’s a wonderful way of getting physical activity, as long as we’re sure that the community is safe, as long as we ensure that there are bike paths, so students aren’t out in traffic as they’re trying to bike to school. ...Also, being active and participating in sports. Whether it’s an active sports league or it’s a noncompetitive sporting activity, we want children to get out there and be active.”

And what can parents do?

“Read the front of the package labeling and determine whether or not the product that you’re about to buy is one that you really want to put on your kitchen table.”

Food manufacturers?

“We want to make sure they’re talking about providing information about the products that are actually included in the foods and beverages that they’re marketing. So we can talk about bringing down sugars, we can talk about bringing down fat. I think there will be some exciting things happening on that in the very near future.”

How has the industry response been?

“We’ve gotten a really wonderful response. For example, there are foods in our schools called a la carte foods — not necessarily what’s being served at lunchtime but access to foods that students can get at some point during the day. For the first time ever, both the administration and the food and beverage industry agree that those foods have to meet a certain nutritional guideline.”

Finally, what would you like restaurants to be doing?

“Providing information about what’s in the food that they’re serving. So, on the menu or somewhere easily accessible to the patrons of their restaurant, people should be able to know what’s really in that product [when you] pick your food or beverage.”

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