An hour with First Lady Michelle Obama in KC - Better Learning Through Exercise?

from the convention center in kansas city missouri at our presence first lady michelle obama and kay mcentire and today on k pr presents mrs obama brings her crusade against childhood obesity to the and double a c t mrs obama has taken on childhood obesity as one of the key issues of her office with the ambitious goal of ending childhood obesity in a single generation later this hour we'll talk to obesity experts dr jim hurley iowa via christi weight management in wichita and dr joe donnelly professor and director of the center for physical activity and weight management at the university of kansas but first thousands of delegates attended the end up lacy peas national convention in kansas city this week mondays keynote speaker was first lady michelle obama introduced to buy and level at peach air rifle and rocks league

the men's names bean the only guy he and hey everyone leave leave leave the i want to thank you so much and it is the european data what were the one hundred members in double a sleepy convention

i want to start by thanking chairman roslyn brock beautiful woman for that very kind introduction i mentioned a reception for bargains nineteenth i also want to thank both her a new president and ceo been jealous or they're inspired leadership of this organization and let's give him a round of applause and i want to thank a few other people as well who are your what i think governor nixon and the first lady george m nixon were here how i thank god senator mccaskill who was here and is no longer here but i wouldn't say hello to her representatives cleaver more and sky and mayor funkhouser for all the outstanding work that all of you are

doing for the people of the city and for this great state and for taking time to join us today and finally i want to thank all of you our thank you for few things first of all thank you for being here today and thank you for the outstanding work that you've done in making this a great american institution and also i have to thank you for your prayers for your support i cannot tell you how much that means to me and my girls and my mom and my husband as well you also have so much it really keeps us going and i'm just thrilled to be here one hundred and one years ago the in double a seat he was

established in pursuit of a simple goal and that was disbarred this nation to live up to the founding ideals to secure those blessings of liberty to fulfill that promise of equality and since then the work of this organization has been guided by a simple belief that while we might not fully live out that promise for those blessings for ourselves if we work hard enough and fought long enough and believed strongly enough that we could secure them for our children and for our grandchildren and give them opportunities that we'd never dreamed of yourselves so and for more than a century the men and women of the nw cb have marched and protested you have lobbied presidents and fought unjust laws you stood up and sat

in and risk life and limb so that african americans could take their rightful place as not just at lunch counters and on buses but at universities and on battlefields and in hospitals and boardrooms in congress the supreme court and yes even the white house the preliminary leading the way so i know that i stand here today and i know that my husband stands where he is today because of this organization because of their struggles and the sacrifices of all those who came before us but i also know that their legacy and entitlements to be taken for granted and i know it is not simply a gift to be

enjoyed instead it has an obligation to be fulfilled and when so many of our children still it's in crumbling schools and a black child is still far more likely to go to prison than white child i think the founders of this organization would agree that our work is not yet done when african american communities are still get harder then just about anywhere by this economic downturn and so many families are just barely scraping by i think the founders would tell us that now is not the time to rest on our morals when stubborn inequality still persist in education and health in income and wealth i think those boundaries would urge us to increase our in sin city and to increase our discipline and our focus and keep fighting for better future

for our children and our grandchildren and that's why i really wanted to come here today because i wanted to talk with you about an issue that i believe cries out for attention one that is a particular concern to me not just as first lady but as a mother who believes that we oh it's your kids to prepare them for the challenges that we know lie ahead and that issue is the epidemic of childhood obesity in america today now right now in america one in three children is overweight or obese putting them the greater risk of obesity related conditions like diabetes and cancer heart disease as well and we're already spending millions of dollars in this country your victory these conditions and that number is only going to go up when he's on healthy children reach adulthood but it's important

to be clear that this issue isn't about how our kids' book is not about that it's about how our kids feel it's about their health and the health of our nation and the health of our economy and there's no doubt that this is a serious problem it's one that it's affecting every community across this country but just like with so many other challenges that we face as a nation the african american community is being hit even harder by this issue we are living today that we're decades beyond slavery we're decades the un jim crow when one of the greatest risk to our children's future is their own health african american children are significantly more likely to be obese or white children nearly half of african american children

will develop diabetes at some point in their lives the last half of our children if we don't do something to reverse this trend right now our kids won't be in any shape to continue the work begun by the founders of this great organization they won't be in any condition to confront all those challenges that we know still remains so we need to take this issue seriously as seriously as improving under achieving schools as seriously as eliminating youth violence or stopping the spread of age it at any of the other issues that we know are devastating our communities but in order to address this challenge we also need to be honest with ourselves about how we got here because we know that it wasn't always like this for kids in our communities the way we live today it's a very good report even when i was

growing up they don't agree many of you probably grew up like i did a community that was a rich fatty the middle class to work people knew their neighbors they looked after each other's kids the spanish brought african american the communities we went to a neighborhood schools around the corner so many of us have to walk to and from school every day rain or shine i know you've told that story a chicago where i was raised we did it in the no shows are you in in school we hadn't recessed lights a day in gym class and a lonely atoll in the afternoon after

school in the summer there was no way we be allowed to lie around the house watching tv when that many channels that our parents made us get out and play outside yeah to get out get out get in the inside and we would spend hours ryan my splayed softball freeze tag jump and double dutch we were constantly on the move only stopping it or wet when streetlights came out right and he was a totally different experience back then in my house we really ate out really even when both parents work outside the home most families in my neighborhood sat down at the table together as a family formula and involved

marian robinson status we ate what we restore my mother never cared whether me and my rather light what was on our plates we ate what was there or we didn't eat this simple as that we never ate anything fancy but the portion sizes were reasonable when they were rarely seconds maybe for your father matthew and there was always a vegetable on the plate and many of our grandparents cnn their own gardens or they relied on it bobby told me the vegetable man who brought fresh produce that without people now buy back in they had fresh fruits and vegetables in their own backyards and in jars in their cell or doing the winner and that let him just be a pretty

that was helping to build that we know and unless it was sunday oh somebody had word that there were no expectation of dessert after our meals and the injury in a mask and so what our popular alice for special occasions now if you were lucky you might get a quarter to take to the point a story gets into an ekg but you did not eat it all at once because you never know when you see another piece and so you see a bit maybe a day the indiana game without any expert advice and without spending too much money we managed to lead a pretty healthy lives but they desirable different today and many kids these days are so

fortunate though so many kids can it's a neighborhood schools ago so instead of walking to school their ride in a car or in a bus and in too many schools recess in gym class have been slashed because of budget cuts theories about safety mean that those afternoons outside have been replaced by afternoons inside the tv video games the internet in fact studies have found that african american children spend an average of nearly six hours a day watching tv and that every extra hour of tv they watches associated with consumption of an additional additional one hundred and sixty seven calories for many folks though is nutritious family meals are a thing of the past that a lot of people today are living in communities without a single grocery store so they have to take a two three buses the

taxi was a mile just in my head a lettuce for a sadder it gets the fresh fruit for decades most folks don't grow their own food the way many of our parents and grandparents did a lot of folks also just don't have the time to cook at home on a regular basis so instead they wind up grabbing fast food or something from the corner store and many more places that have few if any healthy options and we've seen how kids in our communities rarely stopped by the store is on their way to school bind themselves so is it pop and ships for breakfast and we see that those same story back to school and live there afternoon snack of candy and sugary drinks according to one study on average a trip to the corner store a child will walk out and that's the war with more than three hundred and fifty calories worth of food and beverage this is on average so they're going to win three times a day

that you're really going to get all of these things made for perfect storm of bad habits and unhealthy choices of lifestyle that's doing too many of our children too a lifetime of poor health and undermining our best efforts to build them a better future well i think the best schools on earth but if they don't have the basic nutrition they need to concentrate they're still going to have the challenge and learned and create the best jobs in the world we must but that won't mean that also had the energy and the stamina to actually do those jobs we can offer people the best health care money can buy but if they're still eating unhealthy lives then will still just be treating those diseases and conditions once they've developed rather than keeping people from getting

sick in the first let's see if anything if that none of us wants that kind of future for our kids or for country and surely the men and women of the end of a lace ep haven't spent a century organizing in advocating and working day and night only to raise the first generation in history that might be on track to live shorter lives and their parents and that's why i've made improving the quality of our children's health one of my top priorities as many of you may know my efforts began with the planning of a garden on the south lawn of the white house but it's important to understand that this garden symbolizes so much more than just watching beautiful things grow it's become a way to spark a broader conversation about the health and well being not just of art she

had spun of our communities and in an effort to elevate that conversation nationally we launched let's move its a nationwide campaign to rally this country were in a single ambitious goal and that is to solve childhood obesity in a generation so that children born today reach adulthood at a healthy weight and for this initiative we're bringing together governors and mayors businesses and community groups educators parents athletes health professional you name it because it has gone to take all of us working together to help our kids lead healthier lives right from the beginning let's move the campaign has four components the first were working to give parents the information they need to make healthy decisions for their families for example we're working with the fda and the food industry to provide better label and something simple so focused on app it's been our swimming of labels trying to figure out whether the food they're buying is healthy or not our new health here legislation requires

chain restaurants to post the calories in the food they serve so that parents have the information they need to make healthy choices for their kids' address and we're working with doctors and pediatricians to ensure that they routinely screened our children for obesity and i can personally attest to the value of these screenings based on my own personal experiences because it won that long ago when the obamas worries actually eating as healthy as we should have been and it was our daughter's pediatrician who actually pulled aside and suggested that i think about making some changes to our family's diet and i know it made a world of difference but we also know that getting better information to parents is not enough because with thirty one million american children participating and federal school meal programs many of our kids are consuming as many as half their daily calories at school that's why the second part let's move to get healthier food into

ours and they're working to re authorize our child nutrition legislation that makes significant new investments to revamp our school meals and improved the food that we offer you know school vending machine so that we're serving our kids less sugar salt and fat and more vegetables fruits and whole grains this is bipartisan legislation and it is critically important for the health and success of our children and we're hoping that congress will act swiftly to get this passed but we also know that healthy eating is only half the battle experts recommend at least sixty minutes a day of activity that's at least the bare minimum and many of our kids aren't even close so the third part let's move is to help our kids get moving to find new ways for them to get and stay active and fit and we're working to

get more kids participating in daily physical education classes and to get more schools offering recess for their students we set a goal of increasing the number of kids to walk or ride their bikes to school by fifty percent in the next five years and we recruited professional athletes they've been fantastic for different sports leagues to inspire kids to get up walk that couch and get moving but we know that even if we offered the most nutritious school meals and we give kids every opportunity to be fit and we give parents the information they need to prepare healthy food for their families all that won't mean much if our family still live in communities where that healthy food simply isn't available in the first place and that brings me to a fourth and final component of the campaign and that is to ensure that all families have access to fresh affordable food in their communities where they live

and one of the most shocking statistics for me and all of this is that right now twenty three point five million americans including six point five million children live in what we call food deserts areas without a single supermarket this is particularly serious an african american communities where folks wind up buying their groceries at places like gas stations in bodegas and course towards what we often pay higher prices for lower quality food but the good news is that we know that this trend is reversible weapon because when healthier options are available in our community we know that folks will actually take advantage of those options one study found that african americans at thirty two percent more fruits and vegetables for each additional supermarket in their community so we know the difference that we can make with some

changes we know there when we provide the right incentives things like grants and tax credits and help securing permits and zoning businesses are willing to invest and lay down roots in our communities and many grocers are finding that when they set up shop in tiny areas they can actually make a decent profit they are learning that they can do well by doing good so as part of let's move we proposed a healthy food financing initiative a four hundred million dollar a year fund that will use to attract hundreds of millions of more dollars from the private nonprofit sectors to bring grocery stores and other healthy food retailers to underserved areas across the country and our goal is ambitious we want to eliminate food deserts in this country within seven years and create jobs and revitalize neighborhoods along the way so i know these goals are ambitious and they are many many more

and as first lady i am going to do everything that i can to ensure that we meet them but i also know that at the end of the day government can only do so much i had spoken to so many experts about this issue and not a single one of them said that the solution is to have government sell people what to do it's not our work instead this is about families taking responsibility and making manageable changes that fit with their budgets and their needs and their taste that's the only way the war it's about making those little changes that he really had out simple things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator walking instead of ran and our bus even something as simple as turning on the radio and dancing with your children than a million living room for hours about replacing all over

they're soda and those sugary drinks with water gets all i did at first fascination with alien worlds alike or deciding that they don't get dessert with every meal and i felt like he deserted now right now where they don't get it every day or just being more thoughtful about how we comparison baking instead of flying i know it's going to be a cutting back on those abortion signs look no one wants to give up sunday neil know why was this a good guide at math and she even fried chicken and mashed potatoes are going hungry no one wants to do that not even the obama strategy but chefs across the country are showing us that with a few simple changes and substitutions we can find help the creative solutions

that work for our families and our communities and that's why i am excited about our new less carbon video series which we're launching let's move website and let's move back this is a great series featuring sam kass a lot of things to that helps with this series features some of the country's top chefs will be demonstrating how folks can prepare simple affordable nutritious meals for their families the first gets shot is that guy by the name of marvin lewis who's known for his cuisine based in north africa or the caribbean south america the lowcountry he's demonstrating how to prepare a week a healthy and tasty dinners for a family of four on a tight budget and it provides a recipe shopping list so that folks can do it all themselves at home and finally it's one thing we can think about is working to make

sure that our kids get a healthy start from the beginning by promoting breastfeeding in our communities we do know is that babies that are breast fed are less likely to be oh east as children but forty percent of african american babies are never breast fed at all not even during the first weeks of their lives and we know that this isn't possible or practical for some others but we got a wic program that's providing new support to low incomes moms who like to try for the biggest the support they need and under the new health care legislation businesses will now have to accommodate mothers who want to continue breast feeding once they get back to work for another name you may not understand how important it is the trust me it's important have a place to go but let's be clear this is it

just about changing what our kids are eating and the lifestyles they are leading it's also about changing our own habits as well and believe it or not if you are obese there's a forty percent chance that your kids will be obese as well and have both you and the child of a parent or obese that number jumps to eighty percent and this is more than just genetics and work in the fact is we all know we are childrens first and best teachers and role models weeds he's very unhealthy habits not just by what we say goodbye how did she and i can tell the in slash at their vegetables upon security contain the average price trust me they will not let that happen i can tell them to go run around outside of huntsville and online free time on the couch watching tv and this isn't just about the example that we set as individuals as families but about the lifestyle we're promoting in our communities as well it's about

the example we said in our schools it's about schools like the kelley edwards elementary school in western south carolina it's a award winner in our usda help the us will challenge this is a school where students have plant their own gardens or that they can taste all kinds of fresh vegetables that they stay active because they got their own dance team and it's also about establishing strong community partnerships animal drugs for every sector and every background there's a fresh food financing initiative in pennsylvania it's a great example this initiative is a collaboration between business not profiting government that's funded more than eighty supermarket projects bringing nutritious food so hundreds of thousands of people and other certain unions these are just a couple of the thousands of programs and projects that are making a difference in communities across the country already so there's any guide here at all this talk of who feels a little

overwhelmed by this challenge because it can be overwhelming it clear if anyone here who might even already losing hope think about how hard it will be to get going for giving up i just want you to take a little round all the things that are already being accomplished because i want folks to learn from each other and be inspired by each other because that's what we've always done that is exactly what happened here in the city half a century ago sega back in nineteen fifty eight thanks right here in kansas city salt what folks down in montgomery and achieve with their bus boycott so they were inspired by all those men and women who walk miles oh miles home each day on aching feet because they knew there was a principle at stake so folks hearing organized their old boy cap of department stores that refuse to serve african

americans jan bills publicizing their meeting statement and this is a quote they stop riding in montgomery celeste out mining kansas city a local music teacher even compose a song that became the anthem for their efforts it was entitled let's take a walk that counts and then as you know a few years later in april of nineteen sixty four folks turned out in droves to pass a public accommodations law mandating that all residents regardless of your skin color be served in restaurants hotels and other public places even folks who were too sick to walk show that's about one organizer recall that they used wheelchairs to get people to the polls and even brought one man in on a stretcher see something about that being carried to the ballot

box on a stretcher those votes didn't do all that just for themselves they did it because they wanted something better for their children and for their grandchildren that's why they do it and in the end that's what has driven this organization since its founding in his wife daisy bates into or hate mail in dutch threats to guide those nine young men and women who would walk through those schoolhouse doors in the world it is why thurgood marshall fought so hard to ensure that children like linda brown and children like my daughters and your sons and daughters would never again know before inequality of separate but equal is why sell me the men and women legends and icons in ordinary folks have faced down their doubts their cynicism

and their fears and they've taken that walk that counts so we owe it to all those who come before us to ensure that all those who come after us our children our grandchildren that they have the strength and the energy and the enduring that help that they need to continue to complete their journey so i'm asking you in the lapd well you know with me let's do it and i'm not an endeavor that i mean we cannot change the health of our community of the enemy the way i will never so i thank you all in advance again for your prayers your thoughts in your support the struggle

continues thank you wall that lesson that was first lady michelle obama is giving the keynote address july twelfth two thousand ten to the national convention of the end of the lazy heat in kansas city missouri and j mcintyre you're listening to keep your prisons on kansas public radio now let's bring a couple of obesity experts into the conversation first dr jim hurley medical director olivia christie weight management in wichita and director of clinical preventive medicine at the university of kansas better early thanks for joining us today in her talk to the end of a lacy pete mrs obama paints a pretty gloomy picture about obesity rates among our children just how serious a problem is this what they are very serious problem both because of the obesity itself and because of the direction of its leading of him in many ways including air the long term issues of

chronic illnesses that are caused by early obesity of life because of what's happening beyond the obesity it mean that well what caught with obesity obviously there are some genetic cause of there's a chemical called move certain drug can help obesity but the big explosion obesity recently has been a change in lifestyle change and the availability of healthy food and the change in the amount of activity that are contributing let's talk about the availability of healthy foods would you pay a bail ability that flew to have to get more work in the purchase it has to be available at a price of that allows us to stay on a budget then we have to know what to do with that they had to take it from the market through the home in the stomach the part of the market and so part of that is the availability of food the price and availability

the location a problem with the availability of certain neighborhoods and then if i have a warrant i mean there are programs now get a fruit and vegetable markets farmers' markets into the inner city there are projects through churches even through some work in helping people learn to make her dishes that are based on fruits and vegetables and grain to make e v dishes quick and easy going for home but these are things that were in our culture actual work to have basically until last quarter of alaska entry cooking fruits vegetables expose part of the knowledge base that we all have so we're going to have to come back and sort of re established add the whole concept of of real food whole food cooking food putting them back into our culture that is not an easy thing to retrace that was sort of a patient the other than

a federal court on aqaba and really a cheap an ambassador joe heavy because you know the thing that we have to date those we have the internet everybody at the internet you can actually learn how to cook really intimate event duvall well yeah so i think the mind changes what we need more than anything an end or even like a campaign for the theater or creative ideas about how we really go to a community and we begin to celebrate a return to good nutrition and in the summertime would be an ideal time to have community wide publishers to let the fruit and vegetables out there and let's make sure everybody knows how to fix them lift their community demonstrations on the town square what we have but summers some pots of boiling water and we teach all the kids out i'm a comic up i mean it really is

going to take a community coming together to teach our kids what good nutrition and i think it's going to take patience and everyone i am i am excited about about someone as personable and feared as visible as michelle obama saying we've got to leap from the top one of the things that mrs obama talked about in her address to the end of a lacy p was the fact that we don't have a change in our thinking in terms of what we serve our kids and how much they have to like it when her mom fix dinner it didn't really matter to her mom weather mrs obama or her brother likes what they were having for dinner white you were served was what you ate how we change our thinking about how we deal with picky eaters in kids that don't necessarily want to eat their fruits and vegetables but i think it is it is difficult and here's what i know and i'm going to go back to an

individual example i hate they had to use the little examples but as a child my mom was home all the time and so she was there for the whole days of the end and we have dialogue going on all day long of iran in an outhouse when supper time came eventually i was hungry number one he supervised the pre dinner routine with regard to smack them to during the day colin were not a lot of the what you are hungry and ho boys or there's nothing else in life it was part of a daylong dialogue of life now if mama just got home from ten hours of sitting in front of a computer screen and be all that by a supervisor i'm not sure that her ability to be a girl next a big meal for the flow of good fruits and vegetables and then tell me that even though i was unhappy

he was going to enforce my eating beer battered huge emotional and personal effort that it's on top of the ten hour day being leached to machine and i think that that we have to see the big picture two and we have to sort of paint the various scenarios for people and we have to understand where they're coming from and then i understand how we can begin to create a culture that aid them in overcoming those barriers in other words if you're at work for ten hours a day i'm coming home how can we make it with the next two hours work for health and for happiness in your family and not just telling people you need to you need to serve more fruits and vegetables or if you need to tell the kids that if they don't leave that they don't get anything else i think we have to have a deeper discussion around helping people help their families one of the recommendations that mrs obama made

was a regular obesity screenings as part of your kids regular exam abbott pediatrician how do we help physicians especially pediatricians feel more comfortable talking to their patients about their weight and obesity issues so interestingly enough that different a debate thats going on in the medical community in the journal of the american medical association the day there's an article about how unprepared physicians or to get like the counseling and how uncomfortable are when it comes to getting people out like a girl a bike they feel like they don't have the time or often that skill to be specific in helping people to develop life of gulf so the question is whose responsibility of the ticket not medicines responsibility then been who we can save the family responsibility and

on that same note as the mother of three kids two of whom are daughters i've been told that everything you say to your child particular your daughter about her weight is the wrong thing as a parent give the ultimate responsibility lies with parents as a parent how do you go about addressing those kind of weight issues without saying the wrong thing well obviously one of the ways they can work in a traditionally if the partner with your children in the preparation of unhealthy food to kids learned to cook and not just for girls but the growth and i've learned to cook learn to shop but then take time and again that one of the things that's not true today that was true that was true before you knew that there was a place and a person in a place mainly a parent in the kitchen that could teach and train her child they were growing up and so the question is can we get back to a

place where where we are actually teaching kids to be self sufficient around to nutrition and exercise says job in that interview that the commission's job to point out the parent that they're your child little weight and here's what you do about a job and from your experience as a physician where do you think that message most effectively comes from if you're a child who is overweight do you think that message is more effective when it comes from your doctor or more effective when it comes from your mom or down i think it's most effective when it comes to form of the significant people in your life in concert there are a number of studies have been done that show that working with parents working with parents plus children or working with children on the way that it almost has

affected just to work with the parents as it is to work with the children of the parents until the child's able to really take control of their buyout it's really very much a function of the way that done the homework we know that the environment outside the home can be difficult but a regional funny that that came out shows that take lunch from home are far less likely to be obese think of that by lunches at school in general what and that's a day that fear that there's involvement from the home of the child ivan choy so whatever mechanism we used to be the family is going to have to be involved are going to turn around the epidemic of childhood obesity you know that early what i'm hearing you say interesting enough is other were talking about childhood obesity itself stimulate the real problem isn't with the disorder and it's with the appearance and their environment that we've created for our children that's

absolutely true and i think most of us understand that hard we have created an environment with generally to working parents can't come back and be difficult because now when a child comes home from school who managed to hold on to it really teach these issues until you know until dinnertime the book cancer coming from work at six o'clock and then starting the process that means dinner and wanted to very rapidly pick better than seven or eight o'clock at night and that law work though i mean we can see these profits have to take a great deal of problem solving and the same kind of creative thinking that allowed us to be very official other time had become increasingly productive than the work aside and needs to be applied to the homes like how can we do better

nutrition tom how can we learn to cook that more productively is here and there are some solutions out there and there are people that teach the skills of preparing several days nielsen and putting them in the freezer if you go to church or evaluating the law the manufacturers make large capsules that are ready for the oven and things like that so i mean there are attempts all over the place to solve that problem but the ad the thing is that michelle obama is taking this on there and putting in a plot where we really played with important not just to have random attempt to address the problem with a concerted effort at the highest level to really fit them together and think of legitimate concerted way if we could begin to have reversed that problem i remember we created this problem in the last thirty or forty years we've surely come fall within and twenty to thirty years this is not something thats been entrenched for two hundred years of the

city in our culture do you think her goal of trying to solve childhood obesity in one generation well i mean in a man's reach more typically this crowded but whatever before i think to say that there's probably going to take generations to deny how innovative and creative the country can be that we created this problem basically in a generation the idea that we're going to take two or three generations to turn it around and say that's probably not the way to approach it i would say that they're trying to solve this problem in a generation of that idea i owe you think that when smoking not everybody has quit smoking but within one generation we have to quit smoking right so not everything is going to be banned and indeed under twenty years more than ready to make that but first we thought the increase in obesity and then we begin to get many people partially a ball with all the positive things they could be doing to reverse

and i think in ten to fifteen years we can have a huge decrease in the in the rate of obesity and therefore an adult in the next generation as i said before i am not going to sit back and believe that if i live if i work hard and lived to be helping it that i have to be in the presence of un healthy non exercising diabetic and chocolate that's just not a world i will eventually so i think what we what we lack of and have a lot of maybe it's definitive leadership and creative ideas and that's why i'm excited to be michelle obama taking the phone i do see in this initiative and other things that are happening that i bet you hear that conversation to a huge amount of you have a bit more power point i have thought it had ten years that was dr

jim hurley medical director via christi weight management in wichita and director of clinical preventive medicine at the university of kansas he joined us by telephone we've got just a few minutes left for my next guest dr joe donnelly he's the director of the center for physical activity and weight management at the university of kansas professor gary you've been a career of studying weight management what works there's no magic develop situation there's too much rihanna too good taste and cheap available everywhere and theres not enough opportunity and they're settling for most people no need for physical activity and when you have this environment it's a perfect way to increase weighed in about anything and it's pretty much what you do to a cow

before you take it to market you restrict its activity and you give it i energy for and that's essentially what we've done with our environment so i think some of the entries in the environment so that is probably just in in terms of information and and that unless psychology and the willingness to change but you know people need to be more physically active and they need probably need to change with it so so we have to there's some out come up with strategies that make people want to be physically active i don't buy the concept that the you know the number one reason that people cite for ever since the nineteen fifties have not been physically active this time that the grass on the voter's priorities now my understanding is that president obama as a fitness program the last president george bush was highly publicized is actually having

a pretty high levels of this program riding a bike riding it hard it's a protected thought i said to myself is you know whether you voted for any of these presidents president united states this time how's the time so i think people are going to have to find the motivation finally we're going to have to create scenarios where it's if it's perceived that are to be physically active entity center somehow we have to make it in the best interest for people to be physically active as opposed to be sedentary and the idea day i refused we hear that their weight and think well next week we do not accept it as a as a viable argument i know that this year i get them or apartheid suspected because if i don't had that activity i accomplished less on showtime thing to me is is just out of our board so describe some the

prices you doing right now with kids round we have a couple it's one of the largest projects that we've done is so with the ymca of greater kansas city and that involves forty two after school ymca programs we have an even split intervention in control schools and many interventions goes wiggling redesign or physical activity and after school nutrition programs and this one is to see the impact it has nothing to do with academic achievement this one does impact health via my body mass index is a primary outcome but their outcomes of thickness and their outcomes of nutrition as well sort of really high impact project over the years there've been anywhere from a thousand or two thousand kids involved and so it's a fairly large projects as i mentioned we finished the five year project has effectively crushed the curriculum that was

twenty two schools have a girl or supporting but it was actually twenty two now with a five year renewal of that and that will be anywhere from fourteen to eighteen school's out we've completed a practical games get moving that accident fourteen thousand children and their families of the family based programs that promoted physical activity and then i promoted to three day per graham which is a dairy program five the day with the fruits and vegetables and decreased the fast food and decrease screen time in kids that are attracted to be true little plastic awards this these were elementary school children and they kept demand for bigger prizes at the end they got double points if their parents participated with them and we use that program and some more before school and after school programs as well as for the home component that was a family intervention you know that one you just mentioned on a personal note my youngest daughter participated

in that and she brought those old cards home and sure enough she drags my husband and i have to john breaux bridge to go for a walk or whatever so she can get double points or if she didn't really care whether we were exercising seat is one of the words that is sometimes you have to get the deal to get a little of course it's all self report but in terms of the court and whatnot that there was a good it's a good family based intervention at a very cheap his record a well meant repeated for a while boy scout leaders we've done it with church leaders and so forth when it was spread all across the city in eastern kansas program that started with a grant from the sun for a foundation that still lives on various projects today professor adel a week only have another minute or so what message would you like to get out there about childhood obesity we need the multilevel approach were or all organizations are on board with the promotion of physical activity and nutrition so it's that the environment

become saturated with his message and these opportunities which it does go to that teacher and say it's your responsibility for getting somebody fat and preferring that it right you can't just go to the boy scout leader and set your responsibility or perhaps even the family small pi tiered approach across many organizations to create a different environment where this message is constant and where the opportunities are costs for both physical activity and good nutrition and affect their changes in a manner that may impact wave of great thank you so much for listening with me today that was joe donnelly professor and director of the center for physical activity and weight management at the university of kansas before that dr jim hurley and via christi weight management and first lady michelle obama to find out more about what you can do to fight childhood obesity go to let's move dot

gov i'm kate mcintyre k pr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas