Forum discusses childhood obesity

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Childhood obesity, a recently announced priority of First Lady Michelle Obama, was the topic of a forum at the Michael and Susan Dell Center for Advancement of Healthy Living on Wednesday.

National obesity rates show 16.9 percent of U.S. children, ages 2-19, are classified as obese. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says obesity costs the U.S. government $147 billion.

"If you project ahead to the health consequences those children will have when they become adults it’s really very frightening," said Dr. Kelly Brownell, Director of the Rudd Center at Yale University.

The forum hosted presentations and panel discussions focused on public health interventions, like taxes on food or beverages, physical education mandates or policy changes regarding marketing foods to children.

Experts maintain parental involvement in critical to a child’s health. Besides keeping healthy foods at home and getting kids exercise, parents can take an even more active role in preventing obesity.

"They can work with the local school systems as advocates for their children, to argue for healthier foods in schools,” said Brownell. “Parents can also train their children to resist the messages the food companies put out through their marketing that basically encourage unhealthy eating."

Some large corporations are changing their policies. PepsiCo will remove full-calorie, sweetened beverages from schools in 200 countries by 2012. Coca-cola changed its global sales policy. It won’t sell any of its drinks worldwide in primary schools unless parents are school districts ask.

Other aggressive policy changes are also being considered.

"So we’re calling for a penny per ounce tax on drinks with added sugar which is very controversial so people obviously don’t like it but the beauty of a tax like that is it would lower health care costs because people would consume fewer sugar sweetened beverages," said Brownell.

Texas lawmakers say obesity is an issue that needs to be addressed in Texas.

“We know this is something we have to look at on the state wide level,” said Donna Howard, State Representative for District 48. “We’ve heard some things about taxations. Whether or not we’d got that direction in Texas, I don’t know but we’ve got to look at it at the state level if we’re going to make a dent in this.”