First Lady Michelle Obama, is striving hard to fight off obesity and so should you!

In January, First Lady Michelle Obama, swore to end childhood obesity. She said, “We have everything we need right now—we have the information, we have the ideas, and we have the desire to start solving America’s childhood obesity problem. The only question is whether we have the will.”

The First Lady has all the recommendations, which includes everything from going to the gym, encouraging women to breastfeed, and others are indeed based on science. However, no one knows if these recommendations will work. Rudolph Leibel, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons who helped discover leptin (the hormone that regulates hunger), said, “I’m sure the first lady has every sort of concern for this problem and the belief that it’s in our hands, but we’ve been studying this for years and still don’t have precise answers.”

Liebel adds that he and other experts have been studying these matters but they do not really know the precise causes. However, he and other experts believe that 5 steps have to be considered. Before the First Lady’s mission can be attained, the following steps have to be considered:

(1)  Taking healthy actions. Telling people to eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day and 150 minutes of exercise is not enough at all. Instead, people have to set up a system that enables them to choose an unhealthy snack over a healthier one or doing something that lets them sweat rather than offer pure convenience. It could be a system, wherein one can choose juicy peach over candy; or choose to bike in going to work rather than riding a taxi. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin says, “We have to make it easier for people to be healthy”.

It has always been believed that childhood habits tend to last a lifetime. Thus, prevention efforts for obesity give emphasis on children. Congress is looking into a legislation that improves the nutritional standards of the national school lunch program. On the other hand, the local officials are also doing their share in reducing obesity.

Take the students of Somerville, Mass., as an example. They have been utilizing a year-long intervention program that’s geared towards improving both the eating and exercising habits of their elementary school students. As a result, kids heading towards obesity had a small drop in the body mass index.

Similarly, in Delaware, they took on a statewide effort for four years already and had greatly contributed to kids’ healthful changes. Among these efforts are as follows: elimination of soda and chips in school vending machines; a program that has been adopted in 81 percent of childcare centers and has been encouraging preschoolers to take on fruits and vegetables for snacks, get more physically active and turn to milk and water rather than juice. Through these efforts, Delaware’s childhood obesity rate which is now at 37 percent is no longer increasing. This percentage is the same trends that are largely seen in states who don not have programs like these.

Debbie Chang, vice president of policy and prevention for Nemours of the nonprofit child health organization that runs the said program, is hopeful, “we’re hoping that this leveling off will turn into a decrease in the future.”

(2) Equating calories with high prices. According to the Department of Agriculture’s 2009 report, an average American consumes 600 calories a day more than people did 40 years ago. These 600 calories is taken from the high-fructose syrup and other additives that the past generations have not resorted to.

“The postwar farm policy has been to produce as many calories as possible,” says David Wallinga, director of the food and health program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis. Because of this, more and more corn, soybeans, an wheat are made into sweeteners, oil and bleached flour that are being utilized in processed foods displayed in supermarkets, as well as the “super-size” deals that we see in chain restaurants.

Based on their study that was published in the American Journal of Public Health, Yale University researchers revealed that posting calorie counts on restaurant menus, as mandated by health reform, could slash Americans’ calorie intake by 14 percent. On the other hand, a coalition of 16 food manufacturers swore that by 2012, they will cut down a trillion calories out of their products. Such move is indeed what the First Lady refers to as precisely the kind of private-sector commitment we need.”

However, Kelly Brownell, Yale University’s Rudd Center director for Food Policy and Obesity, disagrees. Accordingly, he believes that an economic shift is more appropriate, which means that nutritious foods should be made cheaper while processed junks foods should be more expensive. Several instances can actually illustrate Brownell’s argument.

For example, shoppers with low budgets prefer buying seven SpaghettiOs for dinner. Indeed, they can make more with it at cheaper costs compared to buying a pound of fresh salmon or cherries. Farmers without nay government subsidies are also affected.

In 1998-2000, the inflation-adjusted price of soft drinks declined by nearly 24 percent, with fruits and vegetables rising by 39 percent, based on a recent analysis performed by Wallinga.  He says farmers who do not have any government subsidies will lose money while growing corn and wheat. Thus, they need lower-interest loans to help them grow apple orchards, peaches, spinach and so many others.

(3)  Don’t get any fatter, overweight folks. Losing weight is no easy task at all. It’s distressing because it just doesn’t work permanently as much as a dieter wanted to. 90% of dieters fail to lose weight. The American Pediatrics Society recommends that kids’ TV and computer time should be strictly limited to no more than 2 hours per day in front of the screen whereas parents should need to step off the dieting track.

Liebel’s research found that overweight’s who lose weight and get to have a healthy body weight, they’ll be burning off 15 to 20 percent fewer calories everyday compared to people who didn’t do anything at all. “The body senses weight loss,” he says, “and perceives it as a threat to survival, driving up hunger and slowing metabolism.” In response to this, he also counsels overweight folks to minimize the risk of disease by losing 10 percent of their body weight. But those who weight 100 pounds or more could qualify for weight loss surgeries.

(4)  Educating people to prevail over their emotions or of mindless eating. Geneen Roth, an eating disorder expert and author of Women Food and God, says, The more people focus on their body weight, the more likely they are to starve and binge, a vicious cycle that can lead to even more weight gain. Food has become their emotional soother, making people calm the moment they eat. Just like cigarettes, it has become more like an instrument to cope with stress.

The government should look into eating to avoid overdoing it. Just like the draft of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans that will be published this year – it calls for Americans to mind what they are eating and carefully select what and how much they eat. In sum, it encourages people to be conscious of what they are eating.

(5)  Science is a tool that the government should respond to. As much as we wanted to know what mainly causes the American nation to become so overweight, obesity experts still could not give full explanations on the matter. A lot of questions like, what role, if any, do “obesogenic” chemicals, like bisphenol A in hard plastics; play in setting our appetites early in life? Why do immigrants who come to our “fatter” nation tend to gain extra pounds while Americans who immigrate to “thinner” nations like Japan tend to lose, are still left unanswered. “We don’t have all the answers yet,” says Brownell. “But we do know we have to intervene on multiple levels” if there’s any hope of solving the obesity crisis in a generation.