As we finish our section on obesity, I want to direct you to this terrific article in Food Technology magazine from 2022. It describes the personal journey of Dr. Sara Bleich, a professor of Professor of Public Health Policy at Harvard and the former Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity at the USDA.
In this article, Dr. Bleich discusses many of the same issues we talked about – childhood obesity, the role of communities, and how obesity affects certain populations more than others. She also touches on one of themes of this unit – how the food industry can partner with the USDA and public health agencies to improve the food supply in order to help reduce rates of obesity.
What is especially inspiring about this article, however, is that while Dr. Bleich may have earned degrees from Harvard and Columbia, when she was a child, her family received SNAP and WIC assistance.
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Comments
I think an interesting point that was made in this article is that there is not a one-size fits all solution to preventing childhood obesity. There are many factors that contribute to this epidemic that call for many different industries to do their part in solving the issue. For example, the food industry could produce more nutritious foods, while school systems could do a better job of educating about nutrition labels and provide easier access to healthy foods. Parents and families could also provide a better example of how to eat a healthy diet.