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Ohio slow in reacting to obesity in children

But state officials are now developing programs to help kids get and stay fit.

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The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer 7:31 PM Saturday, July 4, 2009

Nineteen states say their schools must serve lunches that are healthier than the federal government requires.

Ohio isn’t one of them.

Twenty states have passed laws requiring children to be weighed in school so they and their families know if they’re overweight or obese.

Ohio isn’t one of them.

And 27 states require food sold in school vending machines and at school bake sales to be at least somewhat healthy.

Ohio isn’t one those states, either.

Those facts were pointed out in a national report on obesity released Wednesday, July 1, by Trust for Americas Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing America in 2009, urges us to focus on reducing obesity, particularly now as the United States reforms health care.

This is much more than a health issue, the report emphasizes.

Obesity costs the country billions of dollars in medical treatment for diabetes, heart disease and other weight-related diseases.

So what’s up with Ohio?

Why isn’t it helping kids get fit when so many other states are?

The short answer: Ohio’s working on it.

“This is something that’s just now beginning with us,” says Kristopher Weiss, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Health.

“We are beginning here at the health department to work with our sister agencies to help make improvements in school nutrition options available to children and physical activity opportunities before, during and after school.”

Weiss also points to Ohio’s Obesity Prevention Plan, which the health departments Office of Healthy Ohio released in March. That plan sets more than two-dozen goals for the state to meet between now and 2015.

Its not easy, but it can be done.

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