Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Scientists have discovered an unbelievably simple new way to fight childhood obesity

Children in America are steadily getting more and more obese. The numbers are staggering. In 1980, 7 percent of American children aged 6-11 years were obese. By 2012, that figure more than doubled, to 18 percent. During the same period, adolescent obesity rose from 5 percent to nearly 21 percent.

Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, who has set his sights on tackling America’s obesity epidemic, has singled out the problem of childhood obesity in particular. Last October, he welcomed two dozen children from the I’m A Star Foundation to the nation’s capital to present nearly a year’s worth of research on the topic and ask their suggestions to combat it.

In his speech to Murthy, Aaron Johnson, Jr., 13, a seventh-grade student at James Weldon Johnson Middle School in Jacksonville, Florida, said the main hurdle to overcoming childhood obesity was the fact that kids aren’t involved in the solutions.

“Our concern is that the vast majority of the ‘call to actions’ and strategic plans for childhood obesity are written by adults, shared by adults, discussed by adults, and the information never gets out to the people most impacted: the children,” Aaron said.

One of the main battlefronts in the war against childhood obesity are the nation’s schools. After all, kids are in school for around eight hours every weekday in a controlled sitution.

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