The Obama administration has unveiled its comprehensive plan to deal with childhood obesity. "The 124-page plan sets targets for reducing obesity and benchmarks for improving child nutrition," Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports on the Green Fields blog. The plan includes "70 recommendations on a wide range of issues, including ways to increase breastfeeding, a call for food companies to change the way they advertise to kids, a suggestion that Congress use the next Farm Bill to increase food and vegetable production significantly, and proposals to enroll more families in food stamps and to sign up 2 million more kids for school lunches," Brasher writes.
"For the first time, the nation will have goals, benchmarks, and measurable outcomes that will help us tackle the childhood obesity epidemic one child, one family, and one community at a time," said First Lady Michelle Obama, who has been leading the administration’s anti-obesity effort. The plan's overall goal is to reduce the child obesity rate, now 17 percent nationwide, to just 5 percent by 2030. Intermetidiate goals are to reduce the overweight and obesity rates by 2.5 percent by 2015 and 5 percent by 2020.
"The targets show a real commitment to making a difference," Margo Wootan, who follows nutrition policy for The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, told Brasher. "They seem to be planning to measure their progress." The plan includes goals to increase breastfeeding rates by 5 percent every two years and boost U.S. fruit and vegetable supplies by 70 percent by 2020, Brasher reports. The proposal does not include a price tag for the program. (Read more)
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