Culture of Health Blog

“Children have the right to be in environments that are health promoting and free of unhealthy foods and drinks.” —Ana Larrañaga works with Salud Crítica, a public health advocacy organization based in Mexico City

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the State of Childhood Obesity website.

Last year, in the midst of the pandemic, legislators in Mexico moved swiftly to ban the sale of unhealthy foods and beverages to children.

Oaxaca was the first state to approve junk food bans.

This started as a true grassroots movement, ignited by the strong community advocacy of 13 different Indigenous groups who were determined to protect people from diabetes and obesity—and prevent the displacement of traditional foods that are deeply rooted in their culture. They fought to prohibit distributors from delivering sugary drinks and junk food to their local stores.

October 1 ushered in the largest permanent benefits increase in the nearly 60-year history of what is known today as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

Among the many lessons emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic is the impact of obesity. People with obesity and associated diseases tend to become sicker and are more likely to die when COVID-19 strikes.

We know childhood obesity is a powerful predictor of obesity in adulthood. It puts children at increased risk for developing numerous health problems later in life, including diabetes and heart disease. In addition to these chronic diseases, early research suggests that obesity may also increase their susceptibility as adults to serious illness like COVID-19.

The Nutrition Facts label just got its first big makeover in 20 years. Learn why the updates will be a game-changer for parents and families.

When a mother walked into my health clinic five years ago with her 13-year-old daughter, she wanted to know why her daughter had gained a significant amount of weight in a matter of months. She was concerned an underlying medical condition might have caused the sudden spike her daughter’s weight. I was concerned as well. Childhood obesity is an epidemic that affects far too many children and it is linked to other serious, chronic health conditions, including high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and asthma.

I knew I would run tests and order blood work, but I also wanted to know what factors in her social world could have sparked the weight change. We sat down together to look at her daughter’s growth chart, see when the growth trajectory started to accelerate, and what could have been happening then. “Did anything change in your family? Do you recall anything that happened around that time?”

The mom suddenly realized that the changes started shortly after the girl’s father was incarcerated. That’s information I could not have gotten from a blood test. Nor if I had rattled off recommendations without first sitting down to listen.

“Should I be giving my toddler milk?”

“What’s the difference between fruit juice and a fruit-flavored drink?”

“I thought fat was good for my kids. Why should I switch my 2-year-old to low-fat milk?”

Every day, parents, caregivers, child-care providers and others struggle with questions like these about what kids should drink—and what they shouldn’t. They’re trying to do their best for kids’ health, but it’s not as easy as it may sound.

Ensuring that kids grow up healthy includes paying attention not only to what they eat, but also what they drink, especially during the early years when they are establishing their eating patterns. To do that, parents and caregivers need clear, consistent advice from health professionals about what drinks are healthiest for their kids. And policymakers need guidance so that they can create the strongest policies possible to help all children grow up healthy.

But, faced with an array of product choices and inconsistent messages about what’s healthy and what’s not, it can be challenging to know which beverages kids should drink, especially since recommendations seem to change every few months as kids get older.

New menu labeling information will help families make healthier choices and may save billions of dollars in health care costs over the next 20 years.

Teaming up to reverse childhood obesity has yielded promising results—including new data that shows rates among 2-4 year olds enrolled in the federal WIC program have declined in 31 states. But the work is far from over. 

Providers need to be equipped with the tools to help patients make healthy choices. That’s why the Alliance for Healthier Generation is recognizing innovative training programs providing nutrition, physical activity and obesity counseling education to their students.

Even at the young age of four, Luke was overweight. In fifth grade, he tried out for the baseball team, and although he made it, he struggled that season. He was slower than the other kids as he rounded the bases, and he started having knee pain from the extra weight on his joints. Luke and his family knew they had to do something. But they dreaded going to the doctor, knowing he’d get weighed and then have to confront the escalating numbers on the scale. Year after year, the same thing would happen, and they’d have the same discussion with his doctor when they finally worked up the nerve to go. But the weight never came off.

Apprehension about a visit to the doctor is something we all face, no matter our age or health. Who among us doesn’t get a little nervous before our annual visit, knowing we might face a difficult conversation about losing weight, or flossing more, or stopping smoking? These are things we all know, but have a hard time talking about.

And even worse, if we do have these important conversations, they can lead to feelings of shame and disappointment.

But the reality is that it’s not necessarily your doctor’s fault. Even with the hundreds of thousands of hours of education your doctor gets in classrooms and hospitals, most receive little to no training in how to talk to patients about making healthy choices. In fact, fewer than 30 percent of medical schools meet the minimum number of hours of education in nutrition and exercise recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

While research shows that access to safe neighborhood spaces for physical activity along with affordable healthy foods help families and kids maintain a healthy weight, it’s often not enough.

Health care economist Mike Bertaut illustrated this reality through a deeply personal and passionate post last month. He opened up about his lifelong struggle with obesity and shared some important lessons about how the health care sector can help children maintain a healthy weight. It’s a moving piece worth reading.

As Mike shows us, health care providers—and health insurers—have a critical role to play, especially for children and families at highest risk for obesity and obesity-related disease.