Childhood obesity is a complex, challenging problem. The good folks at Great Schools asked me to explore the matter in a way that might be useful to parents struggling to help their kids maintain a healthy weight.
Find a personal account about how one mom made changes that made a dramatic difference in her daughter’s life.”I learned the hard way that you can’t just ignore [weight problems] in your child,” Melissa Baldan-Carpenter told me. “It’s a medical condition — just like the flu or cancer — and you need to treat it to prevent it from damaging your child’s body and to protect her health.”
Check out a companion story with 10 strategies gleaned from experts that can help an overweight child slim down — or prevent the problem in the first place.
And read a thoughtful Q&A by my colleague Connie Matthiessen on the connection between childhood obesity and poverty.
Too many of our children, a pediatrician with experience in the trenches explains, are both hungry and heavy. “As a society, we often blame weight problems on poor eating habits and a lack of willpower,” notes Matthiessen. “But when families have neither access to nutritious food nor the resources to buy it, healthy meals are a luxury they often can’t afford.”
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Thank you for stopping by Lettuce Eat Kale, the blog of food writer Sarah Henry. Here you'll find posts on school food, urban eats, people with edible interests, and more. Please take a look around and feel free to comment, or click to 
