Monday, 30 November 2015
Patterns of obesity prove resilient | Harvard Gazette
Patterns of obesity prove resilient | Harvard Gazette
This is a wonderful article because it openly identifies the food environment and a lack of skills that could help to promote Health Equity and Equality. Time and Skills are needed in order for Families to prepare nutritious meals . Paul Murphy
This is a wonderful article because it openly identifies the food environment and a lack of skills that could help to promote Health Equity and Equality. Time and Skills are needed in order for Families to prepare nutritious meals . Paul Murphy
Friday, 27 November 2015
Thursday, 26 November 2015
Wednesday, 25 November 2015
Tuesday, 24 November 2015
Friday, 20 November 2015
Thursday, 19 November 2015
Petition Against Pouring Rights at SFSU
https://realfoodchallengesfsu.good.do/petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/
https://realfoodchallengesfsu.good.do/petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/sign-the-petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/thanks/pauljmurphy22%40gmail.com/
https://realfoodchallengesfsu.good.do/petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/sign-the-petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/thanks/pauljmurphy22%40gmail.com/
https://realfoodchallengesfsu.good.do/petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/sign-the-petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/thanks/pauljmurphy22%40gmail.com/
https://realfoodchallengesfsu.good.do/petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/sign-the-petition-against-pouring-rights-at-sfsu/thanks/pauljmurphy22%40gmail.com/
Wednesday, 18 November 2015
Resources | Salud America! | Community Commons
Resources | Salud America! | Community Commons
"
Covering the study period from 2011-2014, the report addressing
disparities in coverage and access to healthcare. The report also
highlights HHS’ covers cultural competency of the workforce, advancing
community-based approaches to promote health and wellness, and
furthering research on racial and ethnic health disparities.
The Implementation Progress Report addresses the HHS’ commitment to addressing and eliminating health disparities.
The plan was first released in 2011 and is a comprehensive tool used by the federal government to address health disparities.
Comment
"
Posted on .
The Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recently released the first Implementation Progress Report of the HHS Disparities Action Plan, which details the agency’s efforts to address disparities in health and healthcare among racial and ethnic minorities.Covering the study period from 2011-2014, the report addressing
disparities in coverage and access to healthcare. The report also
highlights HHS’ covers cultural competency of the workforce, advancing
community-based approaches to promote health and wellness, and
furthering research on racial and ethnic health disparities.
The Implementation Progress Report addresses the HHS’ commitment to addressing and eliminating health disparities.
The plan was first released in 2011 and is a comprehensive tool used by the federal government to address health disparities.
Comment
Tuesday, 17 November 2015
New Campaign Calls for Junk Food and Sugary Drinks to be Removed From Children’s Lives in Mexico, Where, Without Action, 1/3 Will Develop Diabetes
New Campaign Calls for Junk Food and Sugary Drinks to be Removed From Children’s Lives in Mexico, Where, Without Action, 1/3 Will Develop Diabetes
The Alliance for
Healthy Food (http://alianzasalud.org.mx)
New Campaign Calls for Junk
Food and Sugary Drinks to be Removed From Children’s Lives in Mexico, Where,
Without Action, 1/3 Will Develop Diabetes
Wednesday,
February 18, 2015
Policy measures and behavior change needed to
protect future generations from a lifetime of obesity and illness
(Mexico
City, Mexico and New York, United States) – World Lung Foundation (WLF) today
congratulated the Mexican civil society network, the Alliance for Healthy Food,
on the launch of the second phase of its childhood obesity prevention mass
media campaign. This new, provocative campaign, called What did your
children eat today?, has been designed to raise awareness that one-third of
Mexican children will develop diabetes during their lifetime, largely because
of their consumption of junk food and sugary drinks, and to call for the
removal of all junk food and related marketing from children’s lives. WLF
provided technical assistance on the design and development of the campaign,
which will run on radio, out of home media, and the subway in Mexico City, as
well as social and digital media.
The Alliance for
Healthy Food (http://alianzasalud.org.mx)
The
campaign’s print ad shows a young girl surrounded by junk food and sugary
drinks, alluding to the fact that Mexican children are constantly exposed to
these products and the marketing of these products, increasing the likelihood
of children consuming unhealthy foods. A red banner at the top of the ad
highlights the shocking fact that one in three Mexican children will suffer
from diabetes during their lives and the campaign slogan, Let’s remove all
junk food from their world, is a call to act in children’s best interests.
The campaign is targeted at parents and guardians, to persuade them to make
better dietary choices for their children and to be active participants in
calling for healthy environments for children. It is also targeted at
policymakers who can fully implement and enforce existing school food
legislation as well as frame new legislation to stop the pervasive junk food
and sugary drink advertising that targets Mexican children and to introduce
effective, comprehensive food labels for Mexican consumers. Mexico’s
recently-introduced “Soda Tax” is showing that health taxes encourage consumers
to change their behaviour, but food and beverage companies have been using
commercial strategies and legal complaints to try to block and circumvent full
national implementation of the “Soda Tax” and “Snack Tax”, as well as other
health policies aimed at curbing overweight and obesity.
Sandra
Mullin, Senior Vice President, Policy and Communications, World Lung
Foundation, commented: “No-one would wish to place a child at risk of a
lifetime of illness, economic harm and premature death. This campaign makes it
clear that by facilitating consumption of junk food and sugary drinks, parents,
guardians and policymakers are doing exactly that. It will take a concerted
effort by all these stakeholders to reverse a situation where poor dietary
habits are leaving one in three Mexican children with a lifetime risk of
developing diabetes. Alarmingly, the incidence of children developing type 2
diabetes – normally found in adults – is also increasing in many countries
around the world, including Mexico.
“While
parents can make a difference by being good role models and by providing
healthy food and drink choices inside the home, we also encourage the Mexican
government to strengthen its efforts to combat this public health crisis. This
includes standing firm against the lobbying tactics and threatening words of
Big Food and Big Soda, aimed at preventing the passage, implementation and
enforcement of rigorous laws, regulations and policies to help curb overweight,
obesity and diabetes. We would also encourage comprehensive restrictions on the
marketing of junk food and sugary drinks – particularly when it’s targeted at
children. Government could enforce school lunch policies and restrict the sale
of junk food and sugary drinks near schools and other child-centric
environments to improve the diets of school-age children. Government could also
improve food labelling so that it is informative and understandable, to further
demonstrate its determination to tackle obesity at a national level.
“Urgent
and aggressive action is the only way to prevent Mexico’s children from having
a shorter life expectancy than their parents. We applaud the Alliance for
Healthy Food for raising Mexico’s awareness of this health crisis and for
trying to create an environment in which Mexican children are free of the junk
food and sugary drinks that are detrimental to their present and future
well-being.”
On behalf
of the Alliance for Healthy Food, Alejandro Calvillo of the consumer rights
organization El Poder del Consumidor commented, “Government officials
and legislators have a decisive role to play everywhere in safeguarding the
future of children. When children see junk food and its pervasive marketing in
every corner of their environment, and when the government and educators fail
to inform consumers and children of the health risks of certain foods, we are
failing our children.”
The
concept of What did your children eat today? was pre-tested with
audiences to determine the effectiveness of the campaign’s ability to grab the
viewer’s attention, its personal relevance, the strength of the take-away
message and its likely impact. An evaluation of a previous campaign, Don’t
harm yourself drinking sugary drinks (Sugary Drinks), found that
three-quarters of respondents said they intended to reduce their children’s
consumption of sugary drinks after seeing the ad. Two-thirds of respondents
agreed that sugary drinks are bad for health. The Sugary Drinks campaign
informed the public of the health risks associated with their consumption and
built support for legislation to introduce a national tax on sugary drinks in
Mexico.
The
Bloomberg Philanthropies Obesity Prevention Program provided funding and
support for the launch of the campaign, and supported World Lung Foundation’s
technical support.
The toll of obesity on health and the economy
According
to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Mexico has the world’s highest
rate of adult obesity, with one third of all adults obese. One-third of
children and seventy percent of adults are overweight or obese. This has
resulted in an alarming increase in the incidence of non-communicable diseases
(NCDs), which experts believe will result in the current generation of Mexican
children being the first to enjoy a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
It is estimated that 14 percent of Mexican adults have diabetes; Mexico has the
sixth-highest incidence of diabetes-related mortality in the world, claiming
half a million lives during the last six years.
The
Mexican President, the National Academy of Medicine and the Secretary of Health
all recognize that such a high incidence of overweight and obesity is one of
Mexico’s greatest public health problems. Obesity and diabetes cost the public
health sector more than 40 billion pesos a year. The total costs of obesity in
Mexico were estimated at US$5.5bn in 2008 and are estimated to reach US$12.5bn
per year by 2017 (USD conversions from pesos are variable according to the
exchange rate). As diabetes takes its toll on the country’s poorest families,
who make up the majority of the population, the sustainability of the nation’s
public health system and the nation’s economy both are jeopardized. These
issues motivated the government to announce its National Strategy for the
Prevention and Control of Overweight, Obesity and Diabetes in 2013. Public
health advocates in Mexico welcomed the Strategy as an important first step in
addressing this public health crisis, but believe that much more needs to be
done to stop the rising trends of obesity and diabetes among the Mexican
population.
About the Alliance for Healthy Food in Mexico
In August
2012, concerned about staggering rates of malnutrition and obesity in Mexico
and serious deterioration of healthy eating habits, more than 20 public
interest organizations and social movements, together with academics, created a
national coalition called the Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria (the
Alliance for Healthy Food). This alliance of producers, consumers, nutrition,
development and environmental experts advocates for comprehensive policies to
restore healthy eating habits and environments, and to combat all forms of
malnutrition including obesity. The Alliance’s manifesto explains the need for
action in defense of public interest on eight priority policy issues including
compulsory access to purified free drinking water, healthy food and drinks in
schools, clear food labeling, protection of children from targeted marketing,
fiscal measures on junk foods, access to affordable, fresh food and promotion
of breastfeeding. The What did your children eat today? campaign is one
of several social marketing campaigns that the Alliance has sponsored to date.
For more information, please visit http://alianzasalud.org.mx or @actuaporlasalud on Twitter
About
World Lung Foundation
World
Lung Foundation was established in response to the global epidemic of lung
disease, which kills 10 million people each year. The organization also works
on maternal and infant mortality reduction initiatives. WLF improves global
health by improving local health capacity, by supporting operational research,
by developing public policy and by delivering public education. The
organization’s areas of emphasis are tobacco control, maternal and infant
mortality prevention, tuberculosis, asthma, and child lung health. For more
information, please visit worldlungfoundation.org or twitter @worldlungfdn
For more
information, please contact:
Tracey Johnston, World Lung Foundation at tjohnston@worldlungfoundation.org
Tracey Johnston, World Lung Foundation at tjohnston@worldlungfoundation.org
Original
Link Below:
Citation:
Johnston, T. (2015, February 8). New Campaign Calls for Junk Food and
Sugary Drinks to be Removed From Children’s Lives in Mexico, Where, Without
Action, 1/3 Will Develop Diabetes. Retrieved November 17, 2015, from
http://www.worldlungfoundation.org/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/35625/pid/6858
Citation:
Johnston, T. (2015, February 8). New Campaign Calls for Junk Food and
Sugary Drinks to be Removed From Children’s Lives in Mexico, Where, Without
Action, 1/3 Will Develop Diabetes. Retrieved November 17, 2015, from
http://www.worldlungfoundation.org/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/35625/pid/6858
The Soda Tax Wars: Let's Help San Francisco and Berkeley Crush Big Soda | Jeff Ritterman, MD
The Soda Tax Wars: Let's Help San Francisco and Berkeley Crush Big Soda | Jeff Ritterman, MD
Tobacco Taxes have taken on smoking in Canada . Successfully ! Paul Murphy
Tobacco Taxes have taken on smoking in Canada . Successfully ! Paul Murphy
Monday, 16 November 2015
San Francisco Students Battle Campus Sugary Drink Contract - ABC News
San Francisco Students Battle Campus Sugary Drink Contract - ABC News
Who are the forces that are promoting Physical Activity and Isolating the Individual ? At some point an intersection between the Food Environment and Big Food will take place. Big Food has an Obesity problem. Paul Murphy
Who are the forces that are promoting Physical Activity and Isolating the Individual ? At some point an intersection between the Food Environment and Big Food will take place. Big Food has an Obesity problem. Paul Murphy
Sunday, 15 November 2015
Obesity Rises despite All Efforts to Fight It, U.S. Health Officials Say
Obesity
Rises despite All Efforts to Fight It, U.S. Health Officials Say
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
November 12, 2015
WASHINGTON
— Despite years of efforts to reduce obesity in America, including a major push
by Michelle Obama, federal health officials reported Thursday that the share of
Americans who were obese had not declined in recent years, and had edged up
slightly.
About 38
percent of American adults were obese in 2013 and 2014, up from 35 percent in
2011 and 2012. Researchers said the increase was small enough that it was not
statistically significant. But to many in public health, it was surprising and
disheartening.
“The
trend is very unfortunate and very disappointing,” said Marion Nestle, a
professor in the department of nutrition, food studies and public health at New
York University. “Everybody was hoping that with the decline in sugar and soda
consumption, that we’d start seeing a leveling off of adult obesity.”
And
compared with a decade ago, the increase was significant: In 2003 and 2004,
about 32 percent of adults were obese, said the report’s lead author, Cynthia L.
Ogden.
About 38
percent of American adults were obese in 2013 and 2014, researchers said, up
from 35 percent in 2011 and 2012.
Ruth
Fremson / The New York Times
Health
experts had hoped that gradual improvements
in the American diet in recent years might have moved the needle on obesity.
Consumption of full-calorie soda has dropped by a quarter since the late 1990s,
and there
is evidence that calorie intake has dropped for adults and children.
Obesity began rising in the 1980s, but the rate flattened in the 2000s, and declines among
young children in some cities had lifted expectations that the epidemic might
be easing.
Obesity
among young people was unchanged in 2013 and 2014 from the previous period, the
report found. Seventeen percent of Americans ages 2 to 19 were obese, the same
as in 2003 and 2004. Experts pointed out that far more work had been done to
fight obesity in children, including changes in school lunches and the removal
of sugar-sweetened beverages from some school systems.
Noting
that obesity rates did not rise for youth, Ms. Obama’s office said the focus of
the first lady’s efforts has been childhood obesity. Federal figures from last
year even showed a decline among the youngest children,
said Debra Eschmeyer, executive director of Let’s Move, Ms. Obama’s anti-obesity
campaign. “It is more than encouraging to see in today’s C.D.C. report that
childhood obesity rates are no longer rising,” she said.
The
figures are from the National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey, the gold standard for federal health data,
released every two years. For smaller slices of the American population — for
example, women or blacks — researchers used four years of data, from 2011
through 2014, for the most reliable results.
Some of
the most striking numbers were among minorities. About 57 percent of black
women were obese from 2011 to 2014, the highest rate of any demographic. Next
highest were Hispanic women, at 46 percent, and Hispanic men, at 39 percent.
About 36 percent of white women were obese, and 34 percent of white men. The
prevalence of obesity was lowest among Asians, who had a combined rate of about
12 percent.
Dr.
Walter Willett, the chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School
of Public Health, cautioned that the modest improvements nationwide were
extremely unevenly spread, with most of them happening among more educated
Americans. A paper he helped write, published this month
in Health Affairs, found that Americans’ diets had improved in quality from
1999 to 2012 — with a reduction in trans fats, small increases in fiber and
less soda consumption — but that most of those advances were not happening
among lower-income, less educated Americans.
“In
general, there’s been a big gap” between rich and poor, Dr. Willett said. “When
we take the U.S. average, we are hiding a lot of detail.”
There
were a few other surprises. Men had more or less caught up to women in obesity
prevalence in recent years, but the new numbers showed that women had edged
ahead again, Dr. Ogden said. About 38 percent of adult women were obese from
2011 to 2014, the report found, compared with 34 percent of men.
Middle-aged
Americans were hardest hit. Adults ages 40 to 59 had the highest rate of
obesity, 40 percent, followed by people 60 and over, 37 percent of whom were
obese. About 32 percent of 20- to 39-year-olds were obese.
Kelly D.
Brownell, the dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University,
said the new figures were a reminder that many risks, such as the prevalence
and inexpensiveness of junk food, had not gone away, and a sign that policy
makers needed to redouble their efforts to, for example, impose a tax on soda.
“The
emergency flag has gone up,” he said. “We are not doing nearly enough.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/health/obesity-rises-despite-all-efforts-to-fight-it-us-health-officials-say.html?_r=0
Saturday, 14 November 2015
National Soda Tax Would Save Half a Million Kids From Obesity—and Save Money Too
National Soda Tax Would
Save Half a Million Kids From Obesity—and Save Money Too
Public
health researchers say taxing sugary drinks may be one of the most
cost-effective ways to address the public health problems the beverages are
associated with.
Nov 3,
2015
Jason
Best is a regular contributor to TakePart who has worked for Gourmet and
the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Here’s
something the soda industry doesn’t want: another headline touting the benefits
of a widespread tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.
Hot on
the heels of recent news that the
peso-per-liter tax on sugary drinks that Mexico adopted in 2013 appears to be
driving down soda consumption in that country, a team of U.S. public health
researchers published a study Monday that finds a national soda tax
may be one of the most cost-effective ways to curb the epidemic of childhood
obesity in the States.
Advertisement
The team,
led by researchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, examined
the cost-effectiveness of seven approaches to addressing obesity in American
kids, an estimated 17 percent of whom are obese. These ranged from the
preventive, such as implementing a nationwide one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary
drinks to reduce kids’ consumption of all that liquid candy, to giving obese
adolescents increased access to bariatric surgery. Each of the interventions
examined by the researchers required complex modeling based on a wide range of
factors to extrapolate their likely impact and cost-effectiveness over the
course of the next decade (wonky types can feel free to dive into the study
itself, which was published in the journal Health Affairs).
The upshot?
The national tax on sugar-sweetened beverages was predicted to prevent some
576,000 cases of childhood obesity, the greatest number by far. Better yet,
such a tax, which would raise the cost of soda and other sugary drinks by about
16 percent, would be eminently cost-effective, as the researchers report: For
every dollar spent implementing the tax, the net savings for society in terms
of medical costs and the like would be $30.78. Over the course of the next
decade, those savings would add up to an estimated $14.2 billion.
Two other
obesity-prevention strategies examined by the team proved cost-effective as
well. Shocking but true: Food makers are allowed to deduct the cost of their
advertising from their corporate taxes, even when they’re marketing junk food
to kids. What if the feds eliminated that ridiculous tax deduction? The study
estimates nearly 130,000 cases of childhood obesity would be prevented, with a
net savings of $32.53 per dollar spent. Full implementation of federal
standards governing the foods and beverages sold in schools beyond federally
subsidized meals (e.g., snacks sold in vending machines) would prevent 345,000
cases of childhood obesity, at a net savings of $4.56 per dollar spent.
So is an
ounce of prevention really worth a pound of cure, as the old adage goes?
According to the study, yes. As the authors note, “while many of the
preventative interventions in childhood do not provide substantial health care
cost savings (because most obesity-related health care costs occur later, in
adulthood), childhood interventions have the best chance of substantially
reducing obesity prevalence and related mortality and health care costs in the
long run.”
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