বৃহস্পতিবার, ৮ নভেম্বর, ২০১২

Parents Can't Do It Alone: Everyone Is Responsible For Children's ...

From The Huffington Post?..

Over the last 30 years, childhood obesity has increased dramatically, and today, one-third of our children are overweight or obese. As we consider what needs to be done, the first thing that comes to my mind is the African proverb, ?It takes a village to raise a child.? As the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity concluded, everyone, including the food and entertainment industries, government, media, schools and local communities, must support parents? efforts to create a healthy environment for their children.

As a parent myself, I know what powerful forces parents are up against when it comes to raising healthy kids. Children are constantly bombarded with messages for unhealthy food. Messages are on TV, the Internet, in schools, in restaurants and stores. Many common food marketing techniques reach children behind our backs and in ways that blur the line between content and advertising, such as branded games and mobile apps and Facebook posts. Parents are doing their best, but they can?t do it alone. So that?s why our group at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity has surveyed parents every year since 2008 to determine their biggest challenges in encouraging their children to eat healthy. We also wanted to find out what can be done to make their jobs easier.

The parents that we surveyed have a sophisticated understanding of nutrition and childhood obesity. They are not simplistically ?blaming? others for these problems and understand that they have a critical role in raising their own children. What they are saying is that they feel not only unsupported, but actually undermined, by many societal factors that are making parenting more difficult. These factors include the expense of healthy foods, easy access to unhealthy foods, unhealthy food marketing and children?s media usage. Furthermore, parents think that these obstacles are getting worse, not better. Sixty-nine percent of the parents rated the media as a negative influence on their children?s eating habits, followed by the food industry at 61% and the government at 55%.

Parents have access to rating systems that help them protect their children from inappropriate content in the media including the use of alcohol, tobacco, violence and sex. In our survey, parents ranked unhealthy food marketing and unhealthy eating messages just as concerning as alcohol and tobacco use in the media. However, there are no tools to help them identify these harmful forms of media.

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Source: http://www.lensaunders.com/wp/?p=6220

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