What would you do to rid the US of obesity?
Any ideas? I’m doing a presentation for nutrition class on possible solutions or preventions to lower the obesity rate in our country. Here’s what I thought of so far:
Require schools to have nutrition education in order to graduate (childhood obesity is a huge issue right now)
Ban junk food from schools (such as pizza, hamburgers, taco bell, etc) and have more salad bars with a variety of food to teach children how to make healthy choices.
Have more restaurants who offer smaller portion sizes (like TGI Friday’s "right portion, right price")
Have more restaurants consult a Dietitian to help create a menu with healthy options.
Only 5% of Medical schools require their students to take a nutrition class and even then, its usually just a basic class. This is a problem because most people consult their doctors for nutrition advice when they aren’t very qualified. I think all medical schools should require nutrition classes.
I need more ideas please. Thanks!
Connect obesity to health insurance premiums. People respond fairly well to ways that they can decrease their high insurance premiums. An example was when I was able to answer the question, "Do you smoke tobacco?" or something similar to that. It made me feel like it would help my premiums be lower. If there were a similar question, though scales should be present for this one, to ask about one’s weight/height ratio, I think it would cause people to watch their weight more. And we should have it checked each year or half year, along with maybe some other tests to see if we’ve been smoking, drinking too much, doing drugs, and what else they could come up with to lower premiums and make those who don’t take care of themselves bear the burden more equally.
And that is being personally responsible, and not leaving it to others to solve our problems.
I know this wasn’t a health insurance question, but I couldn’t help it since I did at least start off in the right direction. lol.