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Expert: Fight youth obesity with activity, nutrition
YOUNGSTOWN
Education alone won’t change the sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition that have fueled the obesity epidemic of the nation’s and Mahoning Valley youths.
“It’s a ‘stickiness’ problem,” said Mark Fenton, a national public-health, planning and transportation consultant, who was keynote speaker for the fifth annual Innovations Conference Thursday at the D.D. & Velma Davis Education and Visitor Center at Mill Creek Park.
“If we are to reverse the trend, it will take action,” said Fenton, an adjunct associate professor at Tufts University’s Friendman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.
“Information just doesn’t ‘stick’ unless it is backed up by changes in lifestyle that are inherent in the lives people live,” said Fenton.
There is a need to return communities to the days when physical activity and good nutrition were part of everyday life ... when walking and riding a bike were things kids, which he called “free range,” did every day, he said.
Fenton said childhood obesity tripled between 1969 and 2001.
“We no longer call it adult-onset diabetes. Now, we call it Type 2 diabetes because so many children are diabetic; and lack of physical activity and poor nutrition are driving the bus,” Fenton said.
With changes in policy and laws, the country has changed the social use of tobacco, required seat belts and child-safety restraints and recycling.
Public policy can lead to designing communities in which people can safely walk and bike to the store and theater and doctor’s office.
“We have to create a world in which people get more physical activity incidentally because of how communities are organized,” he said.
He urged people to attend zoning and planning meetings and voice their opinions.
“We have to change from emotional and intuitive decisions to evidence-based decisions,” Fenton said.