Michaell Obama takes on Childhood Obesity

Join the challenge! Click here. Image from www.letsmove.gov.

Michelle Obama, self-proclaimed Mom-in-Chief, is taking on one of the biggest challenges parents, educators, and health professionals face today: how to combat rising obesity in children. The numbers are striking: close to 1/3 of American children can be considered obese and obesity rates have tripled in the past 30 years. Over $150 billion dollars are spent each year on obesity-related conditions overall. It is a huge and important endeavor to encourage parents and kids to choose healthier food and fitness options and to motivate health professionals, government agencies, and foundations to work together to meet this challenge.

Personal change is needed, but so are policy changes and structural supports that can help parents and kids make better choices. School lunch and school recess are perfect examples. Kids need healthy lunches both to learn better and to keep healthy. Active play at recess or gym is important as exercise and a way to release pent-up energy so that the kids can settle in and learn better in the classroom. Every parent and teacher knows this. But sadly, school lunch is too often high-fat fried foods and athletic time is too often cut for budgetary or scheduling concerns. No individual parent has control of a school's schedule or its lunch options, but together parents, educators, and local politicians can support common sense choices that can benefit all.

A call to action is needed to make sure these issues are on the table as viewed as critically important. Here, here to Michelle for leading the call. Her newest effort has two parts. The Let's Move campaign is aimed at parents, teachers, and kids providing both practical advice and information on policy advocacy for school lunch and affordable access to healthy food. The Partnership for a Healthier America is a collaboration of the biggest foundations in the health field (W.K.Kellogg, Robert Wood Johnson, etc), many of whom are already sponsoring evaluations on how to improve fitness and food choices among youth. It is so exciting that these ideas are getting a national spotlight with leadership from the First Lady.

Childhood Obesity Battle is Taken up by First Lady, NYT, 2.09.10
Let's Move campaign
Partnership for a Healthier America

Food for Thought: National Day of Service, 01.19.09

Stepping away from the family dinner topic, for just today...

Heeding President-Elect Obama's call for a National Day of Service, I just signed up to help with a food drive on Dr. Martin Luther King Day, this Monday January 19, 2009. Hurry now and sign-up for something in your community at www.usaservice.org.

Honestly, I had to click through on 3 food drives before I could find one to sign up for. (Had to be a food drive, since that's my thing.) The others had been "maxed-out" with too many people vying to sign up for limited slots. Of course, I'm in Brooklyn, but there were so many events, so many possible good deeds that are out there. 8,500 events were registered on the site as of Jan 14th. Click here to see the amazing Google Map.

It's making me teary-eyed, really, and so hopeful that Obama as our new president will represent a change. He has been so inspiring to so many people already. He truly seems committed to helping communities and helping people make a difference in their own lives and their own neighborhoods. Those 8,500 volunteer opportunities? Those are there everyday, if we just knew about them.

As an Obama volunteer in the campaign, I was polled about my opinions and suggestions immediately afterward, as were many people. (Just being contacted for my opinion seemed quite amazing, really.) I wrote that I hoped that he would use his campaign machinery to offer community-based volunteer opportunities and to harness all that energy and positive motion toward making a real difference in communities. The transition team is doing just that with usaservice.org, and I'm again stunned. Obama and his team have the two-punch: he inspires, then implements. There's a system in place to make it easy for people to sign up. That's the genius. It's marketing true, but really it's marketing and implementation. Many people want to "help" in some vague way, but if you're not sure how to do it, if you don't know who to call, it may never happen. Let's hope that the National Day of Service is a boost up to community involvement that lasts. In this economy, in these times, we cannot wait for government to right itself and solve all the problems that have been created over the past years. We have to embrace our communities and act locally to make a difference. Yes, we can!

Off-topic: My answers to the Obama survey

How would you like to see this organization move forward in the months and years ahead?

There was so much energy and enthusiasm generated by the campaign. It was based on the hope that individual efforts would make a difference. I think there must be some effort to sustain that optimism in the face of difficult times. I think some of that energy can be turned toward greater volunteerism in the community at large: food banks, job banks, tutoring for children, help for the elderly, etc. Use the structure to help people find ways to connect with and help their neighbors and neighborhoods.

What first inspired you to join this campaign?

I originally supported Clinton, because I was afraid that Obama was not experienced enough. But I caught the "hope" bug and found that despite my misgivings, I desperately wanted to believe his words and the words of the campaign: that change was possible and that we could all be a part of it.

What was the best part of your volunteer experience?

The organization of the volunteer effort was truly exceptional. You felt like you were really part of a movement. One that took the individual seriously, respected his/her time and commitment, and took the time to listen and say thank you. It was easy to drop in and help out in a concrete way with the online phone tool and with the central offices in Brooklyn.

Obama, mama, and apple pie

Photo: Carly & Art, Flickr pool

"In the unlikely story of America there's never been anything false about hope." Barack Obama, #44

Joy reigns in our household today at the sweeping Obama presidential victory. We are giddy with hope, almost not believing that it is true. God Bless America for choosing hope over fear, and change over the same failed policies and politics. I have been feeling too much like a tired, old cynic and I am proud that we, as a country, have taken a profound step in the right direction.

My voting day was uplifting and tearful in turns. My three kids went to the voting booth yesterday with my husband and me. My 13 year old son stood in line and cast ballot with me for the first time since he was little. My nine year old is now an old hand, as she goes to every election with her dad on the way to school. My three year old thought we we were actually going to see Obama at the polls. (Oh, that's why she wanted me to wear a pretty dress. I complied) There was excitement and giddiness all over as people waited to vote, even in a place as "decided" as Brooklyn, New York. I called my mom who lives in Florida to hear her voting day plans (a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, she) and to share the moment. I was sad to learn that Republican canvassers were at her door on Monday, chatting up my independent-streaked stepfather. Then I went to make calls for Obama, first at a Mega-Call center at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), then at home with that awesome online calling tool. When I had to stop making calls to do school pick up, I re-watched a couple of classic videos posted on The Daily Kos. I was hoping to feel uplifted and"fired up," but in fact, the images reduced me to tears. I was afraid that our country was not ready for Obama, no matter how great his promise.

In the evening, we switched on the TV and followed the political web sites we've been obsessively checking for the past few weeks. The girls were conked out by 8:30pm. But my son held out longer, until about 9:20pm when Ohio was called. It was a positive enough omen for him, and he went to bed with high hopes. My husband and I stuck it out, relived that it was over by 11am. Barack's historic yet humble speech at midnight moving and prescient. The hard work is ahead. Still, the cheering and whopping and car horns blaring could be heard all over Brooklyn. Today is truly a new day.

By chance, I had planned an All-American meal of hamburgers and French fries for tonight's dinner. But now it is definitely a celebration. I may even pull together an apple pie, a family favorite and political symbol extraordinaire.

Worth Fighting For

Martin Klimas for The New York Times

Food and food politics were the leading topic of the New York Times Magazine this week (Food Fights! 10.12.08). So many interesting and informative articles to peruse. Mark Bittman gives a personal, cook's perspective on how attention to food can improve your health and lifestyle. But food policy reaches beyond personal health and well-being; it is comingled with the economic health of the nation, energy dependency, and national trends in morality and morbidity. As usual, Michael Pollan gives us some shocking stats on the state of the (food) union. He also offers wise words and innovative solutions for how to rebuild and improve America's food system.

Pollan says that the next President will have to address the nation's food crisis. I'm not so sure. Health insurance has been a crisis in this country for over 30 years, yet it has only recently become a campaign issue with any life. (Bill Clinton was one of the first, believe it or not.) Even so, health insurance reform is a perennially "left behind" because strong lobbyists oppose meaningful change. I trust Obama, who at least has eaten arugula in his lifetime, to be ably equipped to deal with complex issues surrounding food. Yet, food policy is not easily wrenched from the hands of agribusiness and pork barrel subsidies, just as the health insurance companies and conservative lobbyists have ably undercut health insurance reform.

Still, good food, and all that represents, is worth fighting for. It's a fight you can take on personally, at home, with all the choices you make for you and your family around the dinner table.

Why Take Food Seriously? Because Your Life Depends on It. Mark Bittman, NYT 10.12.08
Farmer in Chief. Michael Pollan, NYT, 10.12.08
Attack of the Tomato Killers. Doug Fine. NYT, 10.12.08
A country so polarized that consuming arugula has become a political act. John Schwenkler. Plenty. 10.6.08