Obesity in America is a crisis that threatens national security - and urgent action is required, says the Medicine Institute.
The IOM plane: totally alter the way Americans approach exercise and nutrition.
How? Ask all Americans who get involved, says Daniel R. Glickman, chairman of the IOM Committee who issued the 478-page plan. Glickman, former Secretary of Agriculture under President Bill Clinton, is executive director of congressional programs for the Aspen Institute.
"When you have a national epidemic of this size, it is in the hands of each individual to make it happen," said Glickman today in a presentation to the weight of the CDC of the Nation Conference in Washington, D.C.
When people understand the consequences of not taking action, they will understand: "Member of the IOM Christina Economos Committee, PhD, of the Tufts University, said at the meeting." This will require bold actions of all sections of society. " / p>
The IOM report "emits an intense and strong challenge that the threat of obesity is imminent and lasting to our children and our nation. He keeps everyone responsible," said James Marks, MD, MPH, senior vice president of the Health at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which financed the IOM study.
Part of this "threat" is economical. The estimated cost of obesity is $ 190 billion a year at U.S., Marks said in a news teleconference. And part of the threat is that the two-thirds of Americans who are overweight or obese are at risk for diabetes, cancer and early death.
What can we do about it? The IOM report leaves a detailed, extensive and expensive plan. The plan requires individual, community action, school and workplace. It also requires the government to face interests entrenched in the review of agricultural subsidies, restricting the advertising of sugary drinks and fast foods, and regulating restaurants that offer dense calorie foods for children.
"These things all should be made and made now if we will reverse this problem," said Glickman. "The question used to be: 'Can we revert the obesity epidemic?' The question now is: 'Will Will?'Free Weight Loss Plan - New Weight Loss Plan for U.S. Obesity Crisis
On the face, the IOM plane is simple. There are five main goals:
As usual, the devil is in the details. For each of these wide goals, there are distinct proposals. And as committee members made clear, it is an integrated plan. It will not work if policy formulators act only from one part and not in others.
Make Americans more physically active Includes:
- Improve communities to create access to places and programs where people can be active in safe and fun ways.
- Continuous and high visibility programs to promote physical activity.
- Require child care providers offer 30 minutes of physical activity for every half day of care.
Create healthy foods and drink environments includes:
- Ensuring that chain restaurants decrease the dense calorie food offerings for children and increase healthy options at competitive prices.
- Define nutritional standards for all food and beverages sold or supplied by the government, and ensuring "that these healthy options are available everywhere attended by the public."
- In low-income communities, limiting the concentration of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, and encourage or attract supermarkets and other healthy stores.
- The President must create a task force to review agricultural policies, including agricultural subsidies.
Transform messages about physical activity and nutrition includes:
- Federal funding of a sustained program of "culturally appropriate messages focused on specific hearings". Messages would ask for things like taking a daily walk, drinking fewer sugary drinks, and learn to read the new front-of-package nutritional labels.
- A threat "or other" to food, drink, restaurant and media industries: they should "take a broad, common and urgent voluntary action to make substantial improvements in their marketing destined directly for children" and adolescents. If a "substantial majority" of these "marketing patterns" have not been met within two years, the government must define "mandatory nutritional standards for marketing" for this age group.
- A single standard nutritional labeling system for all store packages and shelves. Chain restaurants should provide caloric labeling in menus.
Programs to promote physical activity include:
- Customer service standards for health care providers for prevention, screening, overweight diagnosis and treatment and obesity in children, adolescents and adults.
- Require health insurers for coverage prevention Obesity, screening, diagnosis and treatment.
- Encourage employers to encourage "active and healthy life eat at work."
Focus on schools includes:
- Changes to federal law to require all schools to have a 12 K-physical education program with regular proficiency ratings.
- State financing of daily physical education at school for all students.
- Ensuring schools have strong nutritional programs that removal of grains to obesity promote foods and beverages (sugary drinks, fatty foods) for fruits, vegetables and rich in fiber.
- teaching children "alphabetizing food."
Do any one really happen? Glickman is optimistic.
"We got to a inflection point," he says. "You see the federal budget deficit, and most of the problem is health costs. We can not support this. ... We have enough good ideas now about what the right things are doing. And what we need to do all of them , not just focus on one thing. "
