The escalating campaign against childhood obesity gained a resourceful new ally this month when the national YMCA said it intends to become America's leading anti-obesity crusader. With a pervasive local presence and fitness facilities, YMCA branches will bring many welcome assets to the effort.

The challenge now is to link community agencies such as the Y and local schools with health care professionals who can help children and their famili…

From Capitol News, Channel 9, NY by Kaitlyn Ross

Math...A+. Science...B-. Body Mass Index?

Registered Dietitian Judy Carr, said, "There's been a lot of discussion and a lot of debate as to whether this should be included in a child's report card."

The ratio of your child's height to weight could soon make on the report card right next to reading, writing and arithmetic.

Both Arkansas and Illinois have passed legislation, and it…

Dairy consumers are changing, and they want a product the way they want it -- not the way dairy farms produce it.

"Change sneaks up on you," Erwine said, noting that by 2020, 47 percent of the U.S. population will be 50 years old or older, 75 percent of career executives will be women. In addition, 49 percent of the U.S. population eat on the go and 36 percent of all pregnancies last year were single mothers, they said.

Those figures, pa…

The Washington Kitsap Sun ran an article recently on a state legislator wants to make recess mandatory in the state of Washington. Below are the comments I posted in response to the article. I hope that you will take a minute and post comments as well.

Check out the article and comments at....

Posted by recessdoctor on January 21, 2008 at 5:07 a.m.

Of course kids need recess and a "kid break." It is sad that we need legislation to ma…

Schools will be encouraged to build more playgrounds, introduce food education classes and offer 4 hours of PE each week, according to the London Sun. Additionally, NEARLY a million pupils are doing less than the two hours a week of PE and sport recommended by the Government, official figures revealed yesterday.

The huge number represents a devastating setback to Labor’s drive to combat rising obesity rates among the young.

Mr Laws, Lib-Dem scho…

Check out the slide show on childhood obesity provided by MSNBC entitled, "A few extra pounds may harm kids hearts."

A recent study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, found that participation in daily physical education classes decreased the odds of becoming an overweight adult by 28%.

"The message for policy makers is that the failure to offer physical education is 'penny wise and pound foolish,"' study investigator Dr. Robert Wm. Blum from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, told Reuters Health.

"With obes…

According to a documentary directed by former Brigham Young University film student Steven Greenstreet, the way schools have reacted to the federal law contributes to a national childhood obesity epidemic. So do a lot of other factors that play out on the schools' stages.

Greenstreet, director of the award-winning documentary "This Divided State," about filmmaker Michael Moore's 2004 visit to Utah Valley State College, is puttin…

Volunteers in communities across the nation united in late October to perform community service projects for Make A Difference Day. The local Make a Difference Day event is led by the Volunteer Resource Center of SCV in cooperation with the city of Santa Clarita in Southern CA. Whenever there are large groups of children around, playgrounds are anything but peaceful. To address the issues of conflicts in games, bullying and the rise of childh…

Parents waiting to know if the Wii Games are a good investment for getting kids moving can find the answer in last week's release of the British Medical Journal.

Put simply. The Wii Games result in a wee amount of physical activity.

Parents are fooling themselves if they hope Nintendo's Wii active games console, which uses a wireless hand held controller to replicate athletic movement, will stop their youngster becoming obese, a study s…

The nation's second largest school system (Los Angeles Unified School District) has launched a Physical Education Campaign: Helping Students Move More, Eat Well, Stay Healthy, Do Their Best in School.

Components of the Campaign include:

First, a 55:1 cap on class size. WOW. 55 students to one teacher??? This seems outrageous. How can one teacher teacher 55 students?

Second, twenty-a-day: enforce California Education Code which mandates …

I live on what's called "the Westside" of Los Angeles. Our local schools are in the 600 school Los Angeles Unified School District. My local elementary school called Kentwood Elementary is surrounded by 6 foot tall fences. On weekend and after school the school yard and playgrounds (like the majority of LAUSD schools) are closed and empty.

Slowly - way too slowly - but surely, Los Angeles city and school leaders are inching tow…

Amy Heuer; Bismarck, The Jamestown Sun

Two recent studies published by the New England Journal of Medicine on childhood obesity provide greater evidence that children are in dire need of quality physical education programs in schools. Overweight children have an increased risk for heart disease in adulthood as early as age 25, and are prone to premature heart attacks and strokes. Bottom line, our children are in trouble, and particularly here in …

Peaceful Playgrounds research has suggested that adding more consumable equipment like balls, bean bags and jump ropes to playgrounds results in more active children. (Peaceful Playgrounds Research)

A study published in the January 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine further substantiates that claim. Researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health examined environmental factors that encourage child…

The CDC convened a panel of experts to evaluate the evidence for the beneficial effects of physical activity on a broad range of health outcomes and behaviors, including body fat content (adiposity) in school-aged youth, ages 6 to 18. The experts based their evaluation on more than 850 relevant scientific studies. Here we discuss only those findings related to overweight or obesity.

The panelists noted that comparing the findings among studies wa…

California public school students are slightly trimmer and fitter than they were a year ago, but many still are unable to meet the state's basic level of fitness, according to figures released Thursday by the state Department of Education. And students in Los Angeles, especially high school students, were significantly less fit than the state average.

About 60% of students in fifth, seventh and ninth grades statewide passed an aerobic fitness…

There are a number of gift ideas to get sedentary children of all age active, says a Purdue University childhood fitness expert.

"The key is to find gifts that also motivate the entire family to move," says Carole DeHaven, a continuing lecturer in the Department of Health and Kinesiology. "Parents are the gatekeepers for healthy living. By providing activities that children enjoy, along with healthy food choices, we can help…

Los Angeles COUNTY: Overweight kids more likely to be found in poorer cities with less park space.

By Melissa Evans, Staff Writer, Long Beach Press Telegram

Never has the link between poverty and child obesity been more apparent.

A new report from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health shows that the richest cities with the most public open space have the lowest rates of obese children. By contrast, cities with larger low-income populat…

LONDON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- A new heathcare bill in England authorizes the distribution of letters detailing children's height and weight as part of the fight against childhood obesity.

Parents of children ages 5-10 will receive letters outlining their child's height and weight to be input into an online "fat check" in an effort to determine the onset of obesity, The Telegraph said Saturday.

The new program is part of the Health and…

Physical education should be compulsory in school and children should have at least three physical education lessons a week, says an own-initiative report adopted by MEPs with 590 votes in favor 56 against and 21 abstentions. The number of children who are overweight or obese is growing by an estimated 400,000 per year, yet, according to a study for the Culture Committee, the average time that primary schools allocate to physical education has f…