According to a local news article, Boulder, Colo. two new council-initiated proposals may become a part of three different proposals set for voters to decide on in November's ballot. Back in July, advocates for the soda tax were supported with over the amount of signatures required for the tax to be put on November's ballot. However, language was debated as to how the tax would be implemented without having a taxpayer bill of rights provision, required to allow the city to raise local government tax. After working with local City Attorney Tom Carr, a single ballot title was created with implementation guidelines of the tax and legally defensible language to help defend against naysayers of the tax. The council has recommended placing the tax proposal on the November ...
Registered nurse Derek Dimas learned kids need to eat healthier to help decrease the high rates of obesity in his hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas (50.7 % Latino). By starting a program to help kids see fruits and vegetables as delicious works of art, students in schools across the city are having fun learning how to create and enjoy healthier snacks.
The Obesity Problem
In spring 2014, Derek Dimas, a nursing student at the time, was certain he wanted to make a huge impact on the overall health of his community of Corpus Christi in Nueces County. While taking an epidemiology class, Dimas reviewed data and learned that the city had record-high levels of obesity, hypertension, and heart disease. About 42% of local Latinos and blacks are overweight or obese, he said. “For ...
A new released Toolkit on Sugary Advocacy from Healthy Food America helps explain the need to reduce sugar in our diets, why it's important to know amounts of sugar in foods and drinks and the latest on sugar reduction policies. According to the research from Healthy Food America, 68% of packaged foods include some type of sugar. Studies from Harvard T.H. Chan School of public health also reveal that regular consumers of sweet beverages like soda, sweet teas, not 100% juices had a 26% higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Latino kids, unfortunately, are already more likely to grow up with unhealthy weights and be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, as they consume higher amounts of juices, and other sweetened drinks, studies show. For parents, teachers, health advocates and ...
According to a local article, Representative Peter Welch announced support and co-sponsorship of two bills that support summer meals on July 19th at a local middle school. The bills will help support students in need of healthy meals while school is out and kids have less access to healthier school meals, that include more fruits and vegetables. The local article explains how the bills supported will help provide low-income eligible households with a debit card that gives families funds for fresh local foods that also in turn support Vermont's agriculture economy. Support of this legislation will also help redefine areas of which low-income economic conditions exist, to ensure more children have access to free meals. Summer meal sites are sparse in Burlington, where 2016 data ...
Having access to clean drinkable water and healthy fresh foods is vital in ensuring children grow up to be a healthy weight. New funds from the state's congressional delegation recently announced that $2.1 million in funds will go to help position new AmeriCorps members into volunteer services for the state. One organization called the Washington County Youth Service Bureau Boys and Girls Club, will help to ensure children of veteran and military families grow up to be a healthy weight. They will receive $325,000 for 26 volunteers, that will help to implement initiatives to help prevent childhood obesity in the state. More funds will also be used to help position AmeriCorps members in addressing problems in affordable housing, water quality, and veteran affairs. To ...
A new government study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state that teens are preferring water more often than soda. According to a recent article, the CDC surveyed teens in 2015, finding 74% of students drank one or more glasses of water a day, and 26% of students reported not drinking any sugary soda at all in seven days, up from 19% in 2007. President of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Michale Jacobson explained in the article that many campaigns have been educating parents and kids about the harms that soda consumption can lead to in one's health, leading efforts to reduce sugary drinks in schools, public vending machines, and with soda taxes, limiting students on these options and helping them to cut out sugary drinks from their ...
For decades artificial sweeteners have been a sugar substitute especially among Latinos and all people who have diabetes, but according to a new study, sugar alternatives may cause people to eat more and sleep less, Univision reports. For their research, investigators from Australia gave sucralose (a chemical present in many artificial sweeteners) to fruit flies and mice and discovered that both of these animals consumed more calories than those animals in a real sugar diet. According to the investigators artificial sweeteners cause a neuronal disequilibrium when the brain is tricked into thinking the body is consuming real sugar but the calories are not existent; thus forcing the brain to send the message to the body to eat more. “These results show us that food 'sugar-free' ...
Early recognition of overweight and obesity, by family and physicians, is crucial, particularly among kids who have higher rates of obesity. However, many people, including many Latinos, don't understand how urgent childhood obesity is because of confusion between overweight and obesity and confusion about what obesity actually looks like.
Parents Underestimate Child's Risk
Parents, in particular, are often unable to correctly identify their child's weight status, thus underestimating their risk for many life-threatening diseases. Additional confusion, that leads to underestimation of health risk associated with obesity, is related to beliefs that big babies are healthier than small babies, and that kids will "grow out of" obesity.
Children Don't "Grow Out of" Obesity
Research ...
The state of Alaska has started the "Play Every Day" campaign to help boost physical activity and reduce sugary drink consumption among families across the state, where two out of three Alaskan adults are now overweight or obese and one out of three Alaskan children are overweight or obese. The new campaign asks kids to drink more water and understand that they don't need sports drinks to play sports. Public service announcement videos for families are also available on the campaign's website, talking about the sugar content in drinks. Posters inform students that even one sweet beverage a day, like a powdered drink, can lead to cavities, weight gain, and type 2 diabetes. The goal of the campaign is to help reduce consumption of drinks that have added sugars, but also to ...
