Michelle Obama believes that the physical and emotional health of Americans is at stake because of the obesity epidemic.
Unfortunately, obesity rates of children within the United States have tripled over the past couple of decades. In fact, one out of nine children in the United States are overweight or obese. Because of this, many children are suffering from increased incidences of diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure, cancer and extreme cases of asthma.
One cause for this is the fact that modern technology has reduced the amount of movement kids experience on a daily basis. Modes of living have become more sedentary and gym class has also decreased in length.
Historically, kids used to play a lot more during school and after school. And meals were home-cooked and provided fewer calories than modern meals.
Today, many children have different lifestyles that do not include a significant amount of gym time and after school sports have been cut from many different programs.
To make matters worse, families are obligated to generate more income which means that there is less time to provide for healthy meals. Portion sizes have also exploded within the last couple of decades.
In fact, many research studies have shown that we are now eating thirty-five percent more calories than we were a couple decades ago and the majority of these calories are coming from fats, oils, sugars and artificial sweeteners that are laden with preservatives.
The good news is that Let’s Move is a very comprehensive platform launched by Michelle Obama that is trying to solve the challenge of obesity within our nation. It has more of a focus on childhood obesity but it does apply to the general population.
And this is very important because the modern day woman faces a lot of challenges in terms of regulating her own weight loss and regulating the weight loss of her family. Because of this, there are many different programs on how to lose weight, how to tone up different areas of the body, and how to eat a healthy diet. But navigating through all these different options can be overwhelming.
But with Let’s Move helpful information is provided for parents that will allow them to make healthier choices for themselves and their children.
There is also a massive push to include more healthy food selections within the school environment.
Ultimately, there are many factors that affect childhood obesity but we need to use a multifaceted approach in order to get the best results. We need the cooperation of private companies and community organizations in order to ensure the success of this initiative.