She wasn’t able to arm wrestle or conduct a push up contest with Michelle Obama, but Susie Wargin did spend some one-on-one time with the First Lady to talk about one of the biggest epidemics facing the future of our country: childhood obesity.

The First Lady hosted children from around the country on Tuesday as part of her Let’s Move campaign.

The kids from Denver, Houston, Miami, St. Louis and DC were treated to time with Mrs. Obama and members of the LA Galaxy.

They also watched in person as President Obama honored the entire LA Galaxy team for their MLS Championship. Indeed it was a special day for many.

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Q: We are hearing everywhere that too many children weigh too much. With even Michelle Obama urging us to “let’s move”, something appears to be in the air.

A: Using a measure of called the body mass index, or BMI, we can compare body mass independent of height. This number allows us to compare children at various ages over the years for their degree of fatness. If we compare children today with children in the 1970s, at the same age and height, 15% of kids weigh today what only the top 5% weighed in 1970 There is lots of research suggesting that overweight children are more likely than not to become overweight adults, so this has implications for a whole generation. The good news is that we seem to be getting fat more slowly over the past 10 years. The evidence is not certain, but we seem to be doing something right.

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This week, the nation’s top public health experts gathered at a much-trumpeted obesity conference hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called Weight of the Nation. (A quick glance at the agenda reveals nothing that would even begin to challenge the food industry.)

Released at this bland event was an equally uninspired report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM, an advisory arm of Congress) called, Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation. The irony of the report’s title gets lost among the 478 pages that aim to solve “this complex, stubborn problem” with “a comprehensive set of solutions.”

One of the recommendations intended to speed things up is for the food industry to “take broad, common, and urgent voluntary action to make substantial improvements” to marketing aimed at kids. This is certainly important, as advocates have for years been sounding the alarm about the intractable problem of junk food marketing to children and its connection to poor health. But another part of the IOM dictate sounded vaguely familiar:

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Even small changes to school regulations can cause a massive uproar.

While Weight of the Nation is airing on HBO this week (I’ll comment on it after it’s fully aired), here’s what happens when public health officials try to do something to make it easier for kids to eat more healthfully.

The Massachusetts public health department came up with a proposal to ban bake sales in public schools 30 minutes before, during and after classes.

The reaction? An uproar. The ban, according to critics, would

* Make it harder to raise money for class trips and athletic equipment
* Undermine the fundraising efforts of parent and student groups
* Not help prevent obesity
* Take away choice from school districts (“government gone awry”)

Under this kind of pressure, “the governor spoke, emergency orders were issued, and the Legislature voted.”

End of ban.

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Sam Russell

1. Your name, title, and age? What do you do (or did you do) for a living?

Sam Russell, Celebrity & TV wardrobe Stylist Age 40

2. Who was the person that inspired you as a child to eat healthy and stay fit? What was their relationship to you?

My Mom was/is my biggest source of inspiration. She always stressed the importance of healthy mind, body and soul. Eating healthy is just simply not enough to be strong. You have to also equally take care of your spirit—follow your dream; don’t be selfish—HELP OTHERS!

3. What did they do to inspire you?

My Mom is a survivor. She became a widow when I was 15, raising 3 boys with only one income and no “inheritance” from my deceased Father. My mother always had a inner light about her, an inner strength. Very book smart! My Father was the opposite. Very abusive and unhappy. Eyes of stone. He died of a heart attack at the age of 33. But looking back—something died inside of him a long time before that.

4. How did their lesson change your life?

My Mom’s journey taught me a lot about survival. I am flooded with positive memories of the love she had for us as small and fragile kids. She developed her voice and spiritual outlook on life. Mom always stayed focused on making sure we had the best in life and taught us the importance of never being a victim to anyone or any situation.

5. Do you convey their message to kids in your life presently?

I have no kids, but I did start a travelling mission last year that is directly in sync with these life lessons I experienced at such an early age. With all of my Hollywood fashion contacts, I now travel the US surprising women in need with $10,000 in work and personal attire. I consider these women to be survivors; like my Mom.

6. What would be your main message to children today to lead healthy lifestyles?

Our kids today will soon be young adults. Its inevitable that they will experience heart-break at some point in their teenage years. The best thing to teach them is self worth. Not worth that is decided for them by someone else at school. That no matter what—this “fleeting moment” is only a fragment of their amazing lives.

7. Do you have a web site you would like to promote….web address only?

www.wardrobedept.com

Malica Astin, 11, never paid much attention to how much physical activity she got. But one day she played basketball while wearing a small activity tracker called a Zamzee on her waist. Later, she plugged it into a computer’s USB port and uploaded the data captured by the device’s accelerometers. Unlike a FitBit, a popular pedometer geared to adults, Malica’s Zamzee didn’t tell her how many steps she took or calories she burned. Instead, it gave her points for the movements she made.

Even months later, she recalls the details of that first windfall: 758 points. And why not? The points are a currency that she can spend in the virtual world of Zamzee.com, where she created an avatar and outfitted it with braces, a necklace, and a hula skirt.

Malica has since earned 3,612 “Zamz,” and could eventually save enough to get real items like an iPod Nano (16,000 Zamz) or Wii console (18,000 Zamz). “At first, I didn’t know what it was all about,” she says. “Then I really started liking it.”

Malica’s experience illustrates the goals of Zamzee, a startup that is testing the notion that the addictiveness of games can be harnessed to solve a seemingly intractable social ill—in this case, childhood obesity. Rather than focusing on weight loss or diet, Zamzee hopes to reward movement of any kind in children 11 to 14, the ages when, according to research, physical activity drops precipitously.

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Kids making a difference…..

Schools in Bossier and Shreveport used a contest to help change the obesity epidemic by providing more options for healthier lunches.

A shocking prediction was released last week reporting that 42 percent of American’s will be obese by 2030.

Students at Parkway High School were asked to try a concoction that debuted Tuesday. The new recipe would widen their ideas of healthy eating. It was called sweet potato delight and it was the winning recipe in a contest put on by Krewe de les Femmes Mystique that challenged students in both parishes to come up with a healthy veggie option.

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Remember when sports was what poor children used a way out of their troubled surroundings? Well, hold those memories, because the evidence keeps growing that families of little means are increasingly being shut out of sports at all levels.

The latest evidence comes courtesy of the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. It’s showing that school sports participation of children in lower-income families is falling as more schools institute pay-to-play programs — meaning, a participation fee is assessed. That’s an idea that has taken firm hold in the last few years as schools struggle to balance their property-tax-and-state-funding dependent budgets while both those sources are drying up.

According to the poll, 43% of the families polled (representing 814 children ages 12-17) have children who participate in school sports. Of those, 61% are paying a participation fee, averaging $93 per sport. The poll reports that 12% of parents cite that the cost of school sports for a decrease in participation by at least one of their children.

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Local events like this make a big difference…..

Glendale fifth-graders at Don Mensendick Elementary School didn’t just study childhood obesity, they developed policy positions to fight it.

The students have spent the school year tending a vegetable garden to learn about nutrition. And studying other food matters.

They recently presented their policy recommendations to state Sen. Jerry Lewis, R-Mesa: Eliminate “pink slime” from school menus, get rid of flavored milks and encourage the use of gardening to provide hands-on learning and a healthy food source for students.

The well-versed 10- and 11-year-olds ensured their presentation was not an attack on school lunch officials but about educating others to improve health.

“If eating is a basic survival need, why don’t we talk about it?” said student Matthew Medina, who was among seven students to make the recent presentation in their classroom.

Teacher Nicole Littau’s 30 students identified childhood obesity as the problem they wanted to address as part of Project Citizen. The idea was to go beyond simply identifying a problem to advocating for solutions.

“I’m very proud of them,” Littau said. “They have such a drive now and are always asking who they can present their research to next.”

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/community/surprise/articles/2012/04/27/20120427glendale-student-fight-childhood-obesity-policies.html#ixzz1uxxslioq

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Carson C. Chow deploys mathematics to solve the everyday problems of real life. As an investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, he tries to figure out why 1 in 3 Americans are overweight.

We spoke at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where Dr. Chow, 49, gave a presentation on “Illuminating the Obesity Epidemic With Mathematics,” and then later by telephone; a condensed and edited version of the interviews follows.

You are an M.I.T.-trained mathematician and physicist. How did you come to work on obesity?

In 2004, while on the faculty of the math department at the University of Pittsburgh, I married. My wife is a Johns Hopkins ophthalmologist, and she would not move. So I began looking for work in the Beltway area. Through the grapevine, I heard that the N.I.D.D.K., a branch of the National Institutes of Health, was building up its mathematics laboratory to study obesity. At the time, I knew almost nothing of obesity.

I didn’t even know what a calorie was. I quickly read every scientific paper I could get my hands on.

I could see the facts on the epidemic were quite astounding. Between 1975 and 2005, the average weight of Americans had increased by about 20 pounds. Since the 1970s, the national obesity rate had jumped from around 20 percent to over 30 percent.

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