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I was recently interviewed by Zintro an on-line expert forum about childhood obesity. Here is an excerpt from that interview -

One third of Americans are overweight and nearly a third of people under 20 are obese. We asked our Zintro experts to discuss the current leading ideas, approaches, or policies that are being developed to address the obesity epidemic in the US.

Ann Baker, a holistic nutrition therapy coach, thinks that one solution is to teach kids in elementary school about whole food nutrition; where food comes from and is grown; and create school gardens and cooking classes. “Removing soda from schools is key, but so is re-vamping the school lunch program on a national level. Jamie Oliver has the right idea about the kinds of real food kids should eat,” she points out. “We need to incentivize schools to make meal program and educational changes to promote whole foods and healthy lifestyles. Schools that do this should get more federal dollars than those that don’t.

Baker has other ideas about how education around food choices and policies should go together:

• Schools should bring back physical education as a mandatory class, every day in schools.
• Don’t allow food stamps to be used for anything but fresh produce and fresh meats, and unprocessed cheeses.
• From a health policy standpoint, allow insurance reimbursement for nutritional counseling for early prevention.
• Follow a functional medicine and nutritional approach to health instead of the drug and surgery sick care model.

Read the full article here:

obesity-epidemic-in-the-us-teaching-kids-about-food