Childhood Obesity

Walt Disney Co., acknowledging the powerful role that television can play in influencing children's behavior, announced that it has instituted a junk-food advertising ban on programs for kids. Along with its current healthful-foods initiative in its theme parks, Disney will begin imposing strict new standards for food and beverage advertising on its boy-centric network Disney XD, during Saturday morning shows on Disney-owned ABC television stations, on Radio Disney and online. Disney Channel and Disney Junior, which are not ad-supported but receive brand sponsorships, also would be covered under the nutrition guidelines.

His mother described it as "shoveling." Without thinking, her blond, curly-haired boy pushed chocolate sandwich cookies, macaroni and cheese and hot dogs into his mouth. And more and more, the other kids were starting to call 9-year-old Sam Berman "Fatty." At 4 feet, 2 inches tall, Sam was tipping the scales at 80 pounds, about 20 pounds too heavy.

Can childhood obesity be eliminated in a generation? Will we ever get our children away from video games and into the park? Is there anything to be done about neighborhoods with a plethora of fast-food outlets and a dearth of options for eating healthfully? A year ago, First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let's Move! campaign from the front lawn of the White House. She outlined her plan to focus on four primary objectives: educating and empowering parents, providing more-healthful foods in schools, increasing access to healthful foods in underserved neighborhoods and encouraging more physical activity.

Mead Johnson Nutrition Co. said Wednesday that it would stop production of a chocolate-flavored toddler formula that has garnered outrage across the mommy blogosphere by parents who said it would contribute to the epidemic of childhood obesity. Mead Johnson said it would keep producing the vanilla version, which is less sugary. "The chocolate got off on a tangent," said Christopher Perille, spokesman for Glenview, Ill.-based Mead Johnson, which produces the Enfagrow branded formulas.

The stunning three-decade rise in childhood obesity that prompted the government to declare an "epidemic" of fat appears to have leveled off, although the rate is still more than three times higher than in the 1970s, researchers reported Tuesday. An analysis, based on data from tens of thousands of children, showed that the percentage of obese youngsters has been roughly stable since 1999 in every age and racial group surveyed.

In an approach to childhood obesity long considered taboo, the nation's two prescription weight-loss drugs, Xenical and Meridia, are now being tested in children and teenagers. This first large-scale effort to examine the usefulness of diet drugs in the young reflects a growing need, says Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla. Health experts say 10% to 15% of the nation's children are overweight and that the number is climbing.

New legislation in Sacramento that would ban food trucks and other street vendors from doing business within 1,500 feet of a school just doesn't pass the taste test. The purpose of the bill is to prevent childhood obesity, but that is a large and complicated problem, and the state isn't going to reverse obesity by controlling every aspect of a child's or a teenager's life. Certainly, the government is responsible for the well-being of children while they're in school. The Obama administration has rightly taken strong steps to ensure that school meals are more wholesome than they used to be. Now schools need to take those rules and figure out how to produce appealing food that students are willing to eat. We're not suggesting that food vendors aren't part of the problem.

For at least two decades, Arkansas has been among the heaviest states in the nation: By 2000, the state's obesity rate was 20% to 24% and rising. Appalled, in 2003 then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — who had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and famously went on to shed more than 100 pounds — became a champion for healthy lifestyles in his home state. He signed into law a sweeping piece of legislation targeting childhood obesity. Over the next few years, he launched the Healthy Arkansas Initiative, aimed at helping overweight and obese adults improve their physical well-being.

President Obama commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday by leading his administration in performing a day of service in honor of the assassinated civil-rights leader. Obama, wife Michelle and their daughters visited Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Washington, where the president and first lady helped paint fruit characters in the school cafeteria to encourage better eating habits. Nutrition and fighting childhood obesity are top causes for Michelle Obama, who celebrated her 47th birthday on Monday.

While Californians are voting Tuesday for governor and senator, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors will vote on Happy Meals. Under consideration: A ban on the little promotional toys that are often offered with children's meals at fast-food restaurants, unless those meals meet certain nutritional requirements and offer prescribed amounts of fruits and vegetables. This is a particularly ill-considered weapon in the war against childhood obesity because it removes a choice that rightly belongs to parents: whether to buy their children an admittedly less-than-optimally-nutritious meal that is enhanced in children's eyes by a toy. Most parents don't buy these meals as daily dinner fare, and those that do, arguably, wouldn't be careful with their child's nutritional welfare in any setting.