Alison and Sue's blog

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are jointly issued and updated every five years by the Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). They provide authoritative advice for people 2 years and older about how good dietary habits can promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases. The guidelines have far-reaching implications, influencing policy, regulations and consumer messaging.

Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama visited Hollin Meadows Elementary School in nearby Alexandria, Virginia (see AP release here). Students showed Mrs. Obama their extensive vegetable garden where they will harvest lettuce for this year’s Thanksgiving lunch. The first lady traded some gardening tips with the children and passed out bananas and tangerines in the cafeteria line. Mrs.

Last month, the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices released Shaping a Healthier Generation: Successful State Strategies to Prevent Childhood Obesity. The report – which examines what states are doing to prevent obesity, urge children to eat healthfully and encourage them to be more active – focuses on four key settings: early childhood care/education, schools, community and health care.

The United Kingdom's Times Online took on the activity vs. diet debate earlier this week in an article titled "Exercise? A fat lot of good that is for weight loss." Author Helen Rumbelow is not so sure she agrees with that premise. Early on in the article, she states, "That exercise is the key to losing our collective weight is something that we know so deep in our cultural guts that to question it would be ridiculous. ... Recent studies show that the benefits of exercise for weight loss have been overstated. This idea is shocking ... it is too much to swallow."

British researchers writing in a recent American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that their study of 1,862 children ages 9 and 10 shows that physical activity may be more influential than lower sedentary time (in front of a TV or computer screen) on preventing childhood obesity (measured via BMI, waist circumference and fat mass index).

The October 7 New York Times Magazine, dubbed “The Food Issue,” was devoted to just that – some of today’s hottest issues in the world of food and nutrition. An article titled “The Calorie-Restriction Experiment” caught our eye right away.  Oh no, we thought, not the calorie v. exercise debate again.

Today, the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation was launched in Washington, DC.

For the first time, the food and beverage manufacturers, retailers, and other, non-governmental groups have come together to coordinate and motivate action against obesity. The approach is unique, with a focus on changes in the marketplace, the workplace, importantly for us, in schools. We are proud to be part of this effort, and especially pleased that the Healthy Schools Partnership is being used as the model for the HWC Foundation's School-based strategy.

Welcome! We have re-launched our website to be a resource for the latest ideas and analysis regarding America’s childhood obesity epidemic. We have found that while there is a wealth of information about obesity, there’s very little thoughtful analysis readily available. We hope to fill that void, and then some.

For those who don’t know us, ACFN is committed to solving the issue of childhood obesity. We have pioneered a program called the Healthy Schools Partnership that works to break down the silos that exist between fitness and nutrition. We believe it takes a commitment in both areas to truly combat this epidemic. Physical education alone isn’t enough, and nutrition education by itself doesn’t do the whole job. But when takentogether in a program that is tested and proven, great things can happen, and lives will change. We hope you’ll learn more about what we do and join us in our battle against childhood obesity.

The exercise community is up in arms over a recent Time magazine cover story on the relationship between exercise and weight. The gist of it is captured in this excerpt: "People who regularly exercise are at significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases — those of the heart in particular. They less often develop cancer, diabetes and many other illnesses. But the past few years of obesity research show that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated."

We, too, were surprised by the article and its provocative headline "Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.’’ It took a couple of close reads to make sense of the piece, especially in light of ACFN’s focus on nutrition and physical activity.

The author points to a phenomenon known as "compensation" to account for the extra calories people consume after vigorous exercise, which can in fact cancel the benefit of calories burned. What the article neglected to report is that obesity research is quite clear on the central role of exercise in maintaining weight loss once it has been achieved. When caloric requirements are low, it is next to impossible to maintain weight loss over time without an emphasis on physical activity.

The Healthy Schools Partnership was chosen by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), to be featured as a promising practice at the 3^rd Annual Disparities Partnership Forum, to be held November 18-19, 2009, at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia.