Childhood Obesity Is Rising. What Can We Do About It?

 When we think about malnutrition, we often imagine children who don't have enough to eat. But another nutrition problem is growing in the Philippines: more children are becoming overweight or obese.

Recent data show that overweight and obesity among Filipino school-age children and adolescents have increased significantly over the past decade. This matters because obesity in childhood can increase the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other health problems later in life.  And what’s more: eating habits formed in childhood often last a lifetime.  

Childhood Obesity Has Been Rising

 

Source: DOST-FNRI Expanded National Nutrition Survey 2023.

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So what's driving the trend?

It is tempting to think that childhood obesity is simply a result of eating too much and exercising too little. In reality, things are much more complicated. 

The reality is, children today are surrounded by advertisements for sugary drinks, fast food, and highly processed snacks. These products are often affordable, convenient, and available almost everywhere. Meanwhile, healthier foods are not always the easiest or cheapest option for many families.

Experts call this the food environment: the world around us that shapes the food choices we make every day.

Small Changes at Home Matter

The good news is that parents don't need to be nutrition experts to help their children build healthier habits.

A few simple steps can go a long way:

🍌 Make healthy snacks easy to grab. Keep fruits, boiled eggs, corn, or nuts within easy reach.

🥪 School baon can also be an opportunity to build healthy habits. A balanced lunch does not have to be expensive or complicated. An egg with rice and fruit, a tuna sandwich and banana, or leftover chicken and vegetables from dinner can provide a nutritious meal for the school day.  

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💧 Choose water more often. Replacing sugary drinks with water is one of the easiest ways to reduce excess sugar intake.

🚶 Make movement fun. A family walk, bike ride, dancing, or shooting hoops can be just as valuable as organized sports.

📵 Create screen-free mealtimes. Children are more likely to pay attention to what they eat—and enjoy family conversations—when gadgets are put away.

Most importantly, children learn from what they see. When parents model healthy habits, children are more likely to develop those habits themselves.

Parents play a vital role, but they cannot do it alone.

 The environments around children influence their choices every day. That's why many countries are introducing clearer food labels, restricting the marketing of unhealthy foods to children, and strengthening policies that encourage healthier eating.

Several proposals in Congress seek to do exactly that. These measures would help families identify healthier products, reduce children's exposure to unhealthy food marketing, and support better nutrition choices.

By combining stronger policies with everyday actions at home, we can give Filipino children a better chance to grow up healthy, active, and ready to thrive.

After all, healthy habits begin at home.  But healthy environments help those habits succeed.

Despite high food prices, obesity remains a global epidemic - World Bank report.

Obesity and overweight continue to be a global epidemic problem even in times of high food prices.

This is according to the latest edition of the Food Price Watch released by the World Bank Group.  The report noted that while global food prices declined in the last six months, these are still very high and are close to their historical peaks. It is because of this that people choose to serve cheaper and less nutritious food for their family.

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“Unhealthy food tends to be cheaper than healthy ones, like junk food in developed countries. When poor people with some disposable income in developing countries try to cope with high and increasingly volatile food prices, they also tend to choose cheap food that is high in calories but without much nutritious value,” said Otaviano Canuto, World Bank Group’s Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. “Half of the world's overweight people live in just nine countries -- China, United States, Germany, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey -- evidence that obesity is not an epidemic restricted only to rich countries.”

The report further warned that with high and volatile food prices, millions will continue to suffer from poor nutrition, whether it is hunger, undernutrition or obesity which can cause premature death. In 2008, the number of overweight adults was 1.46 billion, of which 508 million were obese. Even conservative estimates see that number rising to 2.16 billion for overweight adults and nearly doubling to 1.12 billion for obese by 2030 across all regions and in countries like China and India.

What is sad though is that the report pointed that despite the gravity of this problem, it is not evident that reducing obesity is among the top global policy priorities. Responses to the obesity epidemic have ranged from doing nothing to trying to promote healthier behaviors through taxes, bans or restrictions on certain foods and awareness campaigns. There have also been extreme cases in Japan where fines have been imposed to employees exceeding certain waistline limits.

WeFeedBack

I recently joined a social network with a purpose.  It's a project from the World Food Program that aims to fight hunger in a revolutionary way.

It's called WeFeedBack, an innovative global initiative using the power of our favorite food - French fries, burgers, chicken, chocolate cake (we all have a favorite) - to provide meals to hungry schoolchildren worldwide, helping them grow strong minds and bodies.

So how does the program work? First, you use the Feedback Calculator.  Enter your favorite food, estimate the cost, and you’ll instantly see how many children will receive a hot meal if you donate it or ”feedback”!  For example, I entered my favorite pansit Malabon which I estimated at PhP45 or $1.  I entered it in my feedback calculator and found out that it could feed 4 kids.  The next step is to donate the same amount (which I haven't done yet, sorry) and then we could see its impact.

You may want to join my network and let's help feed the hungry children.  You may track our "network impact" or how many children we are feeding and what we're giving them.

WeFeedback is an innovative, global campaign building on the premise that if we all do a little, we can achieve a lot. To put it in a nutshell, it’s about sharing food and changing lives.

KFC Double Down Sandwich

I finally had the chance to taste the new offering from KFC called the Double Down. It's a sandwich with two boneless chicken filets, bacon, cheese and mayo. The ad says, "it's too meaty, there is no room for a bun!"

One look at the sandwich and I knew it would be the last time I'll order one. It was too oily that the paper covering the sandwich was drenched with it. You need a lot of tissue paper or else your hands will be oily too by the time you finish eating.

I took one bite and I found reason number 2 to avoid this. It's too salty for my taste. I looked for the nutrition information of the Double Down at the KFC website and found that it contained 1380 mg sodium. That is more than half the 2300 mg ideal daily requirement for adults like me.

Then there is the fat content, which is a whopping 32 g or 40 percent of the recommended 80 mg daily fat intake of adults.  No wonder I felt a little light headed after finishing the sandwich.  

The sandwich is also available in combo with a regular mashed potato and drinks (PhP135 or around US$3).  Some people I know eat it with rice as ulam (viand) and swear it's good.

I will avoid this one for health reasons.  I only wanted to see why it is always out of stock in most of the city's KFC outlets.  One has to try things at least once and with the KFC Double Down, that's enough for me.  If you ask me, my advise will have to be: eat at your own risk.

What Happened to Milk?

I am not a big fan of milk. I don't drink milk because I have lactose intolerance since I was a kid. But my brother drinks lots of milk. Even today when he's fully grown, he still drink the white stuff before he goes to bed. He said it relaxes him.

Though I am not a milk drinker, I encourage people, especially young children to drink milk. It's a complete food, you get Vitamin A for good vision, Vitamin D for your bones and teeth, Vitamin B for over-all wellness and lots of other minerals and micro nutrients. So if there's one food item that needs to be in the grocery list, it has to be milk.

But milk has become complicated today. There are so many brands (one celebrity endorser says, "ang daming milks (sic)"). Each brand has so many claims about having this and that to increase your child's growth, brain power, etc. One even has the temerity to claim that it can make your child a gifted child. Parents now are faced with the dilemma whether they're giving the right milk to their kids or not.

While milk is essentially one of the most nutritionally complete food available, its reputation was never unblemished. There have been instances that milk was blamed for the spread of diseases including tuberculosis. Thanks to the process called pasteurization, some of the bad bacteria that comes with milk have been minimized, if not eliminated.

Just this week, however, milk has become the object of another health scare. But it's not because of its own doing but by men.

In China, hundreds of kids got sick after consuming milk contaminated with melamine, a substance used for making plastic ware. News reports say that melamine contains compounds that added to milk, will make the milk register a higher protein content when tested.

This contamination caused kidney stones among other ailments in hundreds of babies in China. Some eventually died after their organs failed.

This caused the supermarkets here to withdraw all milk and milk products imported from China. Too late for me, I already bought one brand that was ordered to be recalled by government. It's called Yi LI. I intended to give it to my pet dog. Luckily, I haven't given it to her.

This incident however has put milk under suspicion. So much so that some of the milk companies came out with notices that ingredients of their products do not come from China. Even Starbucks had to announce that they don't use dairy products from China.

We Filipinos however have a tendency to generalize, as I have done so in that statement. When you say, some milk brands made in China are contaminated and unfit for consumption, we would avoid the milk not only from China but from anywhere else. So in TV tonight, newscasts reported of of a sudden drop in sales of milk.

Hopefully, this will not completely obliterate milk from the Filipino's diet. I am not so sure though what effect this incident will have on the price of milk. That is another story.