School Nutrition Bill

One of the issues we are focusing on at this year’s Day at the State House is childhood obesity. Every medical student has seen the infamous slides documenting the alarming rise in adult obesity rates over the past few decades (http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/), but it wasn’t until I became a resident and started following patients in my own pediatric clinic that I realized the extent of the effect of the environment on childhood obesity. At my clinic in Chelsea, I have seen countless recent immigrants from Central and Southern America become overweight or obese within a few months of arriving in this country. These are not children that are undernourished in when they arrive-they start out around the 50th percentile and proceed to have nearly vertical weight-for-age growth curves. The abundance of cheap, often unhealthy food in this country, while a sign of our prosperity, also contributes to this epidemic of obesity.

One important venue where we can intervene in this epidemic is the school system. We need to educate children about nutrition and set a good example by offering them healthy food choices while they are in school. The Massachusetts state legislature is now considering a school nutrition bill, H.4376. This bill will ensure that food choices in school cafeterias and vending machines are consistent with current, evidence based guidelines for nutrition.

I am excited to have the opportunity to speak to legislators about this bill, because I believe it will have a lasting, positive impact on the children in my clinic, and across the state!

-Emily Kung, MD