To be clear, the only conclusion here is this program was the wrong approach for the audience it targeted.
Diet, exercise and personal responsibility still do matter. This program was not able to get the target to embrace such things.
That said, there must have been some successes. Who were those? And why? Why was it effective? How can that be replicated and scaled to effect more?
Moi? I suspect too much was targeted at the kids and not enough at the parents. The parents do the shopping. They do the cooking. The kids, by definition, follow the lead of the parents. The kids adapt and conform to the nurture provided to them. Not to sound harsh but how often do to see a (pardon me) chubby kid and then see the parents are similar or worse?
Put another way, I'm willing to bet there was no change for the parents' weight / habits either; in turn no change for the "culture." And so it persists. This is what humans do. We conform to the norms around us.
>Diet, exercise and personal responsibility still do matter.
As an aging former military member it seems like personal responsibility is becoming more and more a foreign concept. I'm saying this not to kvetch but to get peer perception on the thought.
I feel this view is massively overblown in media. Do I read stories about people blaming others for their problems, showing no personal responsibility? Absolutely, all the time, especially in mass media.
Day to day, people I know, people I overhear. people I talk to , show lots of personal responsibility. Sure they might skip the gym, or eat some cake. But they take responsibility for that, and themselves at large.
Frankly its easier to sell newspapers or get views by talking about someone we can look at and say "Wow, I know I skipped the gym today, but I'm not that bad", than to hear an altogether more boring story of the 99% that are basically the same as ourselves.
Ok. But the percentage of adults who are overweight or obese is somewhere around 70%. If we presume 10% is not preventable - that is they have a med condition - then what of the other 60%? Who is feeding those people? Who is forcing them to the sofa?
I understand it's not that simple (e.g., gut bacteria has been tied to weight control). None the less i know people who had what I would consider serious med issues (e.g., cancer) and made no change in lifestyle.
Yes, I'm generalizing. I apologize. But the obesity rate doesn't match well with self responsibility.
Maybe they just don't see the value in losing weight? People smoke and drink despite being well aware of the associated risks, what's so different about food?
That's my point. We've nornalized the abnormal. We've turned (potential) illness into a massive (pun intended) market for self help "gurus" (e.g., Oprah).
95% of the messages are: eat what you want, what matters is you still love yourself." Too few add that the extra weight is unhealthy.
The health behaviour of young children is largely influenced by parents. While promoting healthy eating and activity at school is probably helpful, it’s not enough.
A conclusion of "probably helpful" is not strong enough to spend public education dollars on, at the expense of other academic instruction (there are a fixed number of minutes in a school day, and if you're not teaching healthy eating you can be teaching something else).
Not to mention that what was taught for the past few decades (lots of grains and cereals and no fat) was flat-out wrong and probably contributed a lot to the obesity problems we have today.
The 18-25 yr old generation seems to have way more weight related problems than mine (30-35). But they also tend to be much more responsible by other measures.(less smoking, less binge drinking, harder working, more politically active etc..)
Not to mention across my friends and acquaintances weight doesn't seem to correlate very well with any other since of personal responsibility. I have plenty of incredibly hard working heavy friends, and lazy as hell skinny ones.
What are your reasons for blaming an entire generation's(cross nationality, cross species) obesity problem on personal responsibility?
BTW what do you mean by personal responsibility? Is that a shift in culture, or is it a shift in willpower via dysgynic evolution?
Humams look around (subconsciously) and think "what's the norm?" Excess weight has become the norm. What's +40 lbs when 100 is so common? On top of that it's not PC to say anything on the subject.
Put another way, look at smoking. As it decreased, it decreased more. And so on. Individuals shifted the broader norm.
What made smoking different is it was so closely tied to causing cancer. But mention the ills of obesity and you're accused of fat shaming. We have cultural leaders (e.g., Oprah) saying "Love and accept yourself no matter what" but forgetting to add "even it leads to premature death."
Long to short, we've normalized the abnormal, the unhealthy. I personally don't see an end to this trend any time soon. I hope I'm wrong.
Moi? I tend to agree, especially when it comes to health related issue.
For example, type 2 diabetes is nearly always preventable. It is also the gateway if you will to other ills. But the T2D rate is increasing.
I realize this is a very non-HN comment but...I'm tired of people pissing and moaning about the cost of healthcare while they're inhaling another donut and washing it down with a 32oz soda.
There are plenty of med issues that are not preventable. I understand that. But any resources devoted to the preventable drives up demand for med resources, and thus costs overall. This is economics 101.
I think your observation is correct. Historically our western cultural tendency has been to attribute all blame or accolades to an individual's character, which I think is rooted in part in religious notions (how else can character not be a product of environment and genetics, which are not under one's control?) but mostly as a byproduct of our need to explain the wealth/status gap in the context of a supposed meritocracy.
As we've grown more enlightened, as a society, to the reality that pretty much everything comes down to dumb luck in one way or another, we've started using this to excuse ourselves of our negative characteristics in order to relieve societal pressure to change, because either we don't really want to change or just because it is easier.
It's made even worse by the application of labels to the excuses. Once you assign a label to yourself it becomes part of your identity, your memetic self, and now needs to be defended and possibly even reinforced.
Which isn't to say that our old mindset is entirely correct either. "None of the blame" and "all of the blame" are just two extreme perspectives no the same reality.
I guess what I'm saying is that some things are significantly more difficult for some people than others due to factors beyond their control, and we should be more understanding of that than we are, but at the same time that doesn't necessarily mean they shouldn't work towards change, if change is what they desire, or that there shouldn't be consequences to being unwilling to invest that effort.
For context, I was somewhere north of 320lbs when I graduated college and have lost, and kept off, about half of that. It was by far the hardest I've ever done in my entire life. I wage constant war with my own body, every day, to maintain my current weight and I'm willing to do it because I took up a hobby where weighing less is significantly beneficial. As such, I have a very low opinion of people who think that because they have to exert little to no effort to maintain their weight then for others it must be just as easy. However, I also have a pretty low opinion of people making excuses for their weight, and believing that they shouldn't have to deal with at least some of the consequences of it. If you don't mind being fat so much, because you like eating more than what you think you'd get out of being thinner, that's fine, I can respect that, but you don't get to make that decision and not accept the consequences. You are entitled to be treated like a person regardless, but you don't get to complain about having to pay extra to fly because you need two seats.
I have a vaguely related personal anecdote on this topic: back when I was a school kid I experimented with vegetarianism for ethical reasons. I quickly realised it made no difference so long as I was still at school because my parent bought the same food and cooked the same quantities of meat. All that happened was my Dad got an extra helping of steak or whatever.
Ultimately kids might have some control over what they eat at school (depending on school dinners etc), but you're absolutely right that they have little control over what they eat at home. (or rather they'll be given the option to eat what the family eats or cook their own dinners - which no normal teenager is ever going to do week in and week out if there is already an easier option going)
I do also completely agree with you about leading by example with regards to exercise etc.
Also a lot of that’s locked in by structure. If you buy a house in an American-style suburb, your kids are going to be spending a lot of time sitting in car seats and commute times tend to cut into the time needed to cook healthier foods at home.
A kid can’t decide to move and in many cases it’s really hard to use alternatives: either neglect or deliberate attempts to discourage pedestrians mean that there’s very little in walking distance and often not even sidewalks or road crossings which don’t require substantial detours. It may or may not be safe / conducive to cycling but the safety culture is such that a lot of habits are set by the time they’re old enough to do that independently in their late teens.
I agree. But knowing this, soda shouldn't remain the house drink of choice. Occasionally I glance at other ppls' carts at the supermarket. Let's just say a lot of bad choices are being made.
It's really a shame how some parents are essentially torturing their children by overfeeding, even though it might not really be intentional. In severe cases the results are as harmful as physical or emotional abuse.
Child Protective Services agencies need to get involved. In extreme cases it might be necessary to temporarily take away custody and put the child in foster care. But for most parents with obese children I think some mandatory classes on childhood nutrition and fitness could be a good start.
* an additional 30 minutes of physical activity each day
* a family cooking workshop each term
* in collaboration with local Aston Villa Football Club, three sessions of coaching in physical activities and two on preparing healthy meals, with weekly activity and healthy eating “challenges”
* information sheets about staying active during the holidays, with signposting to local facilities
"""
So 1.5/4 points about diet, and the rest about exercise. Thus mostly focused on exercise. While diabetes is known to be preventable/reversible by primarily diet. Specifically by removing processed foods (that includes oils, refined starches and sugar) and animal(-derived) products (as they are high in saturated fats), while adding lots of whole plant foods. And not only for cooked meals, but for all meals and snacks.
Seems to me they've been trying to optimize the wrong parameters. Just my 2ct.
Research is not yet clear, but not every calorie is the same!
The combination of nutrients in food can have a large effect on the efficiency of nutrient extraction in your stomach and gut. For example, when you consume alchol and a meal afterwards your body will store more fat than if you'd just taken a (slightly larger) meal. This is because your body will prioritize burning the acetate and alchol over anything else (including carbs, fat and protein). Other foods or chemicals might have effects on the resource burning allocation of your body.
Even if you had definitive proof of this, I think OP's assertion still stands.
Concerning yourself with highly complex reactions that could happen between foods, when we aren't even sure how/if those reactions happen is effort spent unwisely, whereas calorie counting has a definitive effect and even if those combinations can hamper or help you, even by ignoring them, you still have the overall desired result.
I find that, as a model, calorie in - calorie out works well, even if at some future time we would discover it's not fully accurate.
>Concerning yourself with highly complex reactions that could happen between foods
This isn't necessitated at all. There's no mystery as to what overlaps between what the most successful food regimens prescribe today: cut sugar, cut refined foods, eat more vegetables and eat real food.
Counting calories is important when it comes to weight management, but optimal health does not stop and start just at BMI. You might be thinner on a calorie-restricted junk-food diet, but you won't be healthier. Your insulin would spike all the time, you'd be nutrient-deficient, etc.
Monumental benefits, which also extend to obesity prevention by virtue of the elimination of problem-stuffs in the face of obesity (canned soda, fried foods and snacking chips). They're at once high-calorie, facilitate eating a near endless amount (anyone can go through an entire bag of chips), and addictive.
All of which to say, you'll be making the task of losing weight easier just by switching to healthy foods, which you should be doing anyway. It's not "complicated", it doesn't need to be politicized.
Also fungi. And fruits are plants so do not need a special mention.
Some would say meat can be "unprocessed", but its not part of the WFPB diet that I mentioned earlier and it known for it's health (obesity reversing) benefits. To the contrary.
and meat, and unrefined grains and legumes (or partially so). There's processing, and there's processing. I don't even have to tell you I'm suggesting the avoidance of refined grains and added sugar.
> Just learn to count calories, how much you need and avoid excesses.
Easy enough to say, but hard when you're trying to get a 6-7 year old (what this article is about) to adopt that lifestyle - that's an age where they eat what they're being served. Given this is in the UK, part would be the school lunch - which is directed by things like cost and preparation time/effort (Jamie Oliver did a series about this) - and part is the parents that feed the kids.
I disagree, when eating natural unprocessed plant foods it is virtually impossible to OD on calories. Sure we need to eat varied. But ODin on calories on a whole-plant-based (WFPB) diet will need you to go straight for the avocados, dates and nuts. Otherwise you are pretty much safe.
When moving towards a WFPB myself I had to get used to eating much larger portions. Its bizarre to know how many olives one needs to eat to get the same amount of fats as in one tbsp of olive oil. Also, combined with the fiber in the olives, that same fat is suddenly not that harmful.
Counting calories sucks. I hope we can fix our notion of food in a way that we do not have to teach all children to count calories. Just teach them to differentiate between real food (as it was growing on this planet before we evolved into humans) an what comes from a factory. The go to the beach and show them how your food choices affect you.
> Bad food in small portions is better than huge amounts of healthy calories.
2 strips of bacon vs a 500gr monster salad..? I know my pick.
> I disagree, when eating natural unprocessed plant foods it is virtually impossible to OD on calories. Sure we need to eat varied. But ODin on calories on a whole-plant-based (WFPB) diet will need you to go straight for the avocados, dates and nuts. Otherwise you are pretty much safe.
You're not really contradicting OP, just outlining simple and obvious ways to reduce calories. The end effect is the same. The best part of the salad is not that it's vegetable, not that it's more natural, but that it's low in calories.
> 2 strips of bacon vs a 500gr monster salad..? I know my pick.
I don't know, what else do you have in that salad? Sauce? What kind? Croutons?
> The best part of the salad is not that it's vegetable, not that it's more natural, but that it's low in calories.
Nope. It about nutrients/calorie, which is high in a salad. Try playing with the cronometer.com app and you'll see what I mean. It's not so easy to get all the bars in green.
> I don't know, what else do you have in that salad? Sauce? What kind? Croutons?
The salad underneath the dressing is usually WFPB as it is, so needs little adjustment.
I also like just salad, with a little salt, pepper and balsamico. But tastes differ. IMHO oil is still not a health food, no not even olive oil. There is science to back it up.
You avoid processed foods, but you add balsamico to your salad?
Balsamico is made by concentrating down grape juice through boiling, and then fermenting the resulting must for years. Isn't that processing, and far away from "whole food"?
And the oil thing is simply scaremongering. Of course oil is calorie dense, but as long as you keep that in mind, it's fine. The papers cited by the guy in the video you linked don't really back up your claims.
(Besides, something doesn't become true, just because there's a paper or two on it)
>"real food (as it was growing on this planet before we evolved into humans)"
Do you mean that literally? Because almost every single fruit and veggie you bite into today was improved by humans, for nutritional value, taste and ease of growing.
The exceptions are basically some berries, mostly. And they're sour as hell without processing.
If you want obese people to lose weight you want instructions making it not complex.
"Should I learn a new way to eat food, new recipes or start cooking for real? No thanks."
"Oh! I can just eat less and switch to 0 sugar soda; no need to make my life harder? Let's try this"
Once they have learned to eat less you can add the trick which is you can stuff your belly with 2lbs of veggies and get less than 1k calories. But for people used to the 5mn in the microwave way of cooking it's an added hurdle.
Sure, if you can manage it. And therein lies the rub! Food is emotional, and hunger corrupts our thinking processes. That's pretty much the whole game right there.
Yeah but you don't have to only eat vegetables to feel full. Just eating "normal" food in the right/limited amounts feels fine (at least after the first few weeks).
Also I doubt that people trying to diet would just eat a few candys for lunch and try to live with that.
And surprisingly the full-feeling does actually correlate with the amount of calories you eat. If you eat 2 strips of bacon (which doesn't seem much) and let it sit for some time (without eating more) hunger passes. Maybe not as much as with better food, but it still does to some degree.
Just some quick napkin math:
In 2015 the US Defense spending was estimated around $598 billion. [1]
In 2014 we spent $12.7 million on the school lunch program. [2]
By reducing the defense budget a little under 5%, we could triple the school lunch program. Reduce it a little under 9%, and we can spend 5x more on school lunches.
I'm not sure of the exact numbers behind an individual school lunch, but from what I know about personal cooking, you can probably spend 5x more and have menus put together for kids that are way healthier than the "Pizza Dippers" I remember.
I'm also not sure if school lunches are sold at a profit, but here's what I found related to that [3]. Assuming they are, do they really need to be, especially if the federal government can subsidize it more?
What's really needed is a societal change with how food is treated. Someone else mentioned a tax on sugar and processed foods, which could help. But another big step would be trying to teach students about nutritious food and living a healthy lifestyle. Of course, it's difficult if the school is the only place they see this, but I don't think it would hurt to have more outlets for healthy living in a student's life.
The problem isn't how food is treated, it's Americans unwillingness to use tax dollars to help poor people(even children). Foods got nothing to do with it, it's the same with their school supplies, technology, quality of education, etc.
You're begging the question that the defence budget should be reduced. Yes, the U.S. spends far more than every other country, but the question is not whether it outspends others, but rather whether it spends enough on itself. From an historical perspective, current U.S. spending as a fraction of GDP is not great (this means that other nations are spending far less than they need to).
You could similarly argue that by reducing Social Security & non-school-lunch welfare spending, the school-lunch programme could be increased.
You're also begging the question of whether or not providing lunches to schoolchildren is a federal responsibility. Reading the list of enumerated powers of the United States[0] it really isn't, unless you squint really hard and figure that it's necessary & proper to provide school lunches in order to 'raise & support Armies,' since malnourished children won't grow up to be good soldiers. But if that's the case … then the school lunch programme is part of the defence budget!
> From an historical perspective, current U.S. spending as a fraction of GDP is not great
It might be lower than tat some points in the past, but that is great. Just like it's great that a smaller share of our population is engaged in agriculture than in the past: resources are free for other pursuits.
> (this means that other nations are spending far less than they need to).
Or, it means that civilization is advancing , and the needed level as a share of total output is declining.
> You're also begging the question of whether or not providing lunches to schoolchildren is a federal responsibility. Reading the list of enumerated powers of the United States[0], unless you squint really hard and figure that it's necessary & proper to provide school lunches in order to 'raise & support Armies,' since malnourished children won't grow up to be good soldiers.
Actually, there's a much better argument for federal involvement in funding and prescribing anything attached to public education including school lunches in the militia clause, if you insist on seeing it through a military lens rather than a commercial one.
> What's really needed is a societal change with how food is treated. Someone else mentioned a tax on sugar and processed foods, which could help. But another big step would be trying to teach students about nutritious food and living a healthy lifestyle. Of course, it's difficult if the school is the only place they see this, but I don't think it would hurt to have more outlets for healthy living in a student's life.
Why stop at measly taxation of consumption or teaching programs?
Let's progress and go further and simply be the Societal Parent by storing the children units in a controlled environment where they'll only receive information and norms deemed by teeming experts to be beneficial to them or everyone. We could call it the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre.
Breaking news! Schools can't fix suboptimal family life.
My mum is a special ed teacher in a poor, rural, redneck corner of New England. Many of the students on her caseload only get anything approaching decent food from the school lunch program. Their broken, mixed up, drunk and drugged out parents can't even keep their own shit together, let alone bear the responsibilities of raising a child. Not surprisingly, if tragically, the child suffers.
For a country that is so weighed down by the health issues around obesity, it's quite weird taxes/incentives based on calorie per gram isn't anywhere in sight. The savings from not having to take care of so much sick people would be enormous.
It's clear from the situation that the free market choices are suboptimal. Who wants to suffer through most of their life and die early? Yet these choices are still made. If you can't educate, then tax fairly and force them to make the right choices.
I'm pretty sure taxing by calorie density would make things better. There's no cost in doing that, it would just shift people to eat less calorie dense food like fruits, vegetables and leafy greens.
The main problem is that the current laws, taxes and infrastructure are heavily optimized to produce calorie dense foods. Another is that people like some of those foods on a regular basis in their diet, so they might complain.
I would say this would cost more in political points than in real money.
Fat shaming is pretty effective. It worked on me and others in my peer group. I don't like being fat and I don't like being around people who are fat. It's unhealthy and unattractive and represents, to me, a lack of control and discipline. I look at someone who can't give up Sugar the same way as someone who can't give up cocaine, as a person who needs help. Possibly in the form of an intervention.
The hard truth where sometimes our feelings _need_ to be hurt early on to save our health (despite all of this modern social acceptance of unhealthy, irresponsible people who lack the self control to put the sugar down and consume less calories daily).
Reading this I was shocked, shocked I tell you to learn that cookery courses for adults and healthy eating "challenges" were ineffective. Actually if you take the numbers at face value then perhaps the intervention made the problem worse - there was a comment yesterday about how short-bursts of extra activity actually made people less active outside their regular exercise times.
So the premise of the study seems to indicate that the problem is largely one of education - I guess that's why they dropped this onto the school system. Instead of playing with a few guinea-pigs on a small scale maybe it's time think to think about the big picture:
1. Get all the crap out of the food supply.
2. Put an end, permanently with threat of severe sanctions, to all the fear-mogering in the media that frightens parents into keeping their kids indoors.
3. Deal with small-scale, crime, bullying, availability of drugs, etc. etc. that keep kids inside in front of the games console or TV instead of getting outside.
4. Create spaces were kids can go outside.
5. Get away from schools being places where kids sit on their asses for 6+ hours a day. For example in today' physics lesson on electro-magnetism we are actually going to biuld a 50m maglev track. OK so this is a bit unrealistic but it would be a hell of a lot more fun and everybody would be a lot more active.
... etc. etc., rant, rant.
In other words, the solution to a complex problem which is poorly understood is probably a whole range of solutions to create an environment where obesity simply is not possible. But that would take a huge amount of money, a huge amount of political will, a lot of creative thinking and a general re-wiring of a large number of attitudes and expectations.
Honestly it wouldn't take a lot of changes, but it wouldn't work because the people who make the laws are those with money. And there are many people who profit from this problem.
Then the wealthy spend their money convincing the public that the government shouldn't have to guarantee reasonably priced medical care because it would tax the wealthy out of the money they gained from this system. This is a pattern that repeats across a lot of issues that affect the poor. Look at overdrafts on bank accounts, mandatory prison sentences, for profit prisons, drug laws...
If history has taught us anything, it's that the wealthy/powerful will continue this cycle until they're getting decapitated on the streets in a few decades, rather than make minimal changes now to head off the problem, no pun intended.
Additional taxes may do, it helped for smoking. Slap the same tax on sugar, (processed) animal products, oils. And make a VAT exempt on whole plant foods. That combined with updated nutritional education will save millions.
Ooops - I had a different definition for 'crap'. Maybe we should instead use a scheme that lets people choose their own food, like a free market or something...
I would say it's both. There are additives and such that are known to be unhealthy and should be eliminated. Making it easy to make cheap crap food by adding unhealthy elements needs to stop.
That said, I agree with you about choice. Creating a Nanny State only further disables the masses, and perpetuates the Nanny State. If you're always doing my homework, how am I going to learn to add?
Moi? Unless, there's a personal responsibility / accountability most people won't change. Not to get off topic, I do believe we (i.e., the USA) should have an accessible healthcare system. That's simply modern common decency. However, making misguided decisions (i.e., preventable diseases) affordable and acceptable is dangerous and expensive.
Its consistent with American values (personal freedom etc). So often the idealist jumps straight to "Lets make people do it my way, uh, the right way! With restrictive intrusive laws! Or raids! Or some other totalitarian tool! Because that'll work!"
I understand its hard to see folks making choices that diverge from my personal sense of what's optimal. But it is a cost of living in a free society.
You're making up stawmans, nobody's talking about that. Just some extra taxation like with cigarettes.
We're discussing ideas on how to get a hold on the obesity crisis. I suggested some extra taxes. Yes some gov't regulation.
You suggested me to use the free market, but food is already on the free market. So I fail to understand what you are actually suggesting.
At the same time you say "get rid of the crap", while not defining how to do so (without gov't regulation accordin to your own preferences) and without defining what in your eyes crap then means...
Please make a real argument.
And why should any solution be "consistent with American values"; obesity in the US is VERY CONSISTENT with American values. Maybe to turn the tide on it we have to look in a diff direction.
To make it clear: what people eat and how they exercise is a very personal matter. Social engineering is intrusive and objectionable. When done with a shakedown its particularly intrusive.
I'm sensitive to this topic. Live in a University town. Periodically some idealistic students petition the City Council for some totalitarian ban as part of a social engineering agenda. The latest was, Permit only Organic Coffee to be sold in the city limits.
This clueless banning/taxing/penalizing folks for living as they please is inconsistent with American values. More typical of nanny states and other less savory government styles.
> This clueless banning/taxing/penalizing folks for living as they please is inconsistent with American values. More typical of nanny states and other less savory government styles.
Bollocks. Read your law books. Weed is only recently legal in some states. Ciggies are taxed heavily, so is petrol. Try walking butt naked in the streets.
My point: your values are arbitrary. And calling them American(TM) does not give them any credibility in my eyes. In fact what you are doing is similar to what you despise in others: setting some standard and calling it "universal" (ok US-niversal)
> To make it clear: what people eat and how they exercise is a very personal matter.
Except:
When there is a public healthcare system that takes care of you fuck up.
When advertising is everywhere shoving "eat unhealthy crap" messages into our collective sub-conscience.
When some sentient being needs to suffer/die/have-children-taken-away-at-birth/is-forcefully-impregnated-(also-called-rape)...
What I'm saying is that I see cases around me of diet not being a strictly personal choice. I think if you try hard you can see it too. It's not so black-white as you make yourself believe.
Not against free-market, just in favour of slapping some extra taxes here'n'there. Just like cigarettes. Would you like ciggies to be traded for normal value? Please no, we made so much progress...
Such things are to be kept to a minimum. Whiskey/cigarette taxes were initially to fund the early US government in time of need. But that precedent has been used to justify any social engineering stunt somebody comes up with for decades.
So you agree it is there? Are you against them taxes now then?
Don't act like the US is some an-cap utopia or something, it full of tariffs, permits, taxes, privileges, etc., pretty much like any western country. Slapping a heavy tax on unhealthy foods is not making a huge diff in that picture.
Participation (permission to measure BMI) was around 60%. That seems like a pretty low rate, and it is not too hard to imagine that parents who know their child has a BMI problem might be more likely to not want it measured, for fear of stigmatizing them or their child. So, while I don't doubt that a program of this sort might not be the answer, I don't think their data is sufficient to prove it one way or the other, unfortunately. I would expect you need well over 90% compliance/permission to measure before you could say that. Disclosure: I am not a statistician (and I would love to hear from one about this issue).
Unfortunately I doubt there are any good solutions to this. People become obese because their lives are too fucked up to care for themselves properly. If your parents are weak, you're at high risk of being obese. If too many bad things happen to you at once you're at risk of being obese. Kind of fucked up to think of society as fucked up hunger games where if you fuck up the bodies of you and your loved ones are mutilated by this condition but that just seems to be how life works
Offer free cooking and nutrition coaching for low-income families. They're the ones with kids most likely to subsist on junk. Presumably if it proves to be effective, the gains will eventually extent to the hold-outs in the middle-class.
I would observe as much at the supermarket on the regular in an area I once lived in, heartbreaking to see.
Low-income workers are as such because they're "ignorant"? Uh..
Why this would work is that free delicious food isn't likely to be turned down. I think people are often creatures of habit and feel intimidated by cooking, along with (as you suggest) disinterest. You don't just teach the mechanics and call it a day, they can walk away with a cheap delicious food and see how easy it is to put together. Ultimately also easier on their wallets than a cart full of 2L soda bottles, frozen pizzas and chips.
Ineffective?! It was positively corrosive. My growing Iowa farmboys were starved nearly senseless. We sent lunches thru elementary school (which they were stigmatized for bringing) but in middle school they had to use the provided meal service. Nearly passed out by 2PM, they struggled thru till they got home and we could put 1000 calories in them to tide them over until supper.
This program was phenomenally clueless and ill-conceived. Instead of patronizing inappropriate low-calorie choices (which drove students to hoarding dingdongs in their lockers), how about providing plentiful good food? That might have had a positive effect.
{edit: I thought they were talking about the federal school-lunch initiative, sorry}
The federal school lunch program is predicated on income. That's basically all it is, a system for providing funds to schools with low income students.
It comes with things like minimum standards for the meals, but I don't think it comes with a limit on how much food each student can be served.
Every school in Iowa has a lunch program, even the wealthiest. Its subsidized of course, but for everybody. True low income can get you a waiver, like many other government programs, but the lunch is available to all.
Diet, exercise and personal responsibility still do matter. This program was not able to get the target to embrace such things.
That said, there must have been some successes. Who were those? And why? Why was it effective? How can that be replicated and scaled to effect more?
Moi? I suspect too much was targeted at the kids and not enough at the parents. The parents do the shopping. They do the cooking. The kids, by definition, follow the lead of the parents. The kids adapt and conform to the nurture provided to them. Not to sound harsh but how often do to see a (pardon me) chubby kid and then see the parents are similar or worse?
Put another way, I'm willing to bet there was no change for the parents' weight / habits either; in turn no change for the "culture." And so it persists. This is what humans do. We conform to the norms around us.