Hi,

 Thought you would enjoy seeing breastfeding presented in a positive light in
the news.

Kathleen Fallon Pasakarnis, M.Ed., IBCLC

Crash Diet And Exercise Key To Reducing Obesity

May 22, 2002 (Hearst News Service) -- The best way to slim down the growing
youth obesity rate is for parents to make sure their children are breastfed,
that their TV-watching time is cut and that they have a proper diet and
plenty of exercise, a government medical expert told a Senate panel Tuesday.

"Obesity is an epidemic in the United States," Dr. William Dietz, director of
the division of nutrition and physical activity at the federal Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.

About 8 million American adolescents - 15 percent of the total - are
overweight, Dietz told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
subcommittee hearing. That's triple the rate in 1980, he added.

Health problems stemming from being overweight or obese are responsible for
300,000 deaths a year, said Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., himself a doctor. That
number puts weight problems right behind tobacco smoking as leading factors
in causing death, he said.

Frist, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and other senators plan to introduce
legislation that would ratchet up significantly the importance of fighting
obesity on the list of federal health priorities, which includes battling
cancer, AIDS and other diseases.

The legislation would give $20 million next year to expand physical education
and nutrition education at schools.

It would also add $68.4 million to the $125 million the CDC spent last year
to mount a campaign targeting children aged nine to 13 with media messages
about the importance of developing healthy eating and exercise habits early
in life.

People are deemed overweight when they weigh 10 percent more than their ideal
body weight and obese if they weigh 20 percent more, according to the U.S.
surgeon general's height-weight index. For instance, a 5-foot-6-inch adult is
considered overweight at 160 pounds and obese at 190.

Dietz said breastfeeding is an important way to reduce the number of children
who are overweight. Medical studies show that breast-fed infants are less
likely to be obese later in life, he said.

He also said that "reducing television time appears to be an effective
strategy to treat and prevent obesity."

Another witness, TV fitness expert Denise Austin, argued that exercise is the
most important factor in fighting youthful weight gain.

"Food is not our enemy," she said. "It's standing still, sitting there, doing
nothing. . . . We need to get up and move more."

Dietz agreed that exercise is important. "Fewer children walk to school, and
the lack of central shopping in our communities mean that we make fewer trips
on foot than we did 20 years ago," he said. "Hectic work and family schedules
allow little time for physical activity."

But he also attributed the expanding waistlines of American youngsters to
fast-food consumption, which now accounts for more than 40 percent of what
the average family spends on food.

Copyright 2002 Hearst News Service. All rights reserved.

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