Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

The way we eat in the developed world is causing needless death — and shortening the lives of the next generation of kids. Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

Childhood Obesity: An “All-Sides” Issue

First Lady Michelle Obama has been incredibly vocal in the fight against obesity, especially among our nation’s youth. This week she announced the goal of ending childhood obesity in a generation. While this is certainly a lofty goal, I’m optimistic about the progress that will be made. Why? A few factors:

1. Childhood obesity is one of the few “all-sides” issues remaining. Red or blue, left or right, rich or poor, we can all agree obesity rates nearing 20% among our youth requires action now. Too often, politics get in the way of progress.
2. A multi-faceted approach – The First Lady has mandated plans from federal agencies, schools, foundations, and even grocery stores for helping attack the crisis head on. There will be no single solution.
3. Awareness is on the rise - More and more folks we talk to already have obesity on their radar. The costs, both human and financial, are too great for elected officials and the media to ignore any longer. As a nation we’re quickly moving passed establishing a problem and are ready to look for solutions.

Optimism aside, Mrs. Obama and her team must begin to approach the problem from a few angle(s) in order to be successful. Our youth are quick to disregard advice given in a “do as I say, not as I do” tone. As we learned in the 80′s & 90′s, it’s virtually impossible to teach kids not to smoke if adults don’t practice what they preach. Obesity is no different. We’ll all need to be healthier if the next generation stands a chance of breaking the obesity cycle.

Common Sense and the Taco Bell Diet

If you haven’t heard already, Taco Bell has launched a campaign urging viewers to try the “Drive Thru Diet,” which mainly consists of items off their Fresco menu. The campaign features a testimonial from Christine Dougherty, who lost 50+ pounds on the diet. I’ll let the nutritionists decide how healthy the diet is, but there are a few factors that even the Taco Bell Diet has in common with most successful weight loss efforts:

• Exercise - Each frame of the commercial features a disclaimer that highlights exercise being a vital factor  in Christine’s weight loss. Common sense? Yes. Common? Not necessarily. More weight loss programs than you’d think neglect exercise as a key factor.
• Caloric Intake - Another disclaimer states, “Pay attention to total calorie and fat intake.” Again, I’ll let the healthcare experts decide what the perfect diet consists of, but for those who don’t have access to this level of expertise, any step to reduce intake of fat and calories is a step in the right direction.
• Patience – We’re big fans of The Biggest Loser and the attention it has brought to obesity. However, the results shown in the TV show (such as losing 39 pounds in a week), are unlikely to be seen by the average person who doesn’t have 24/7 access to trainers and nutritionists. Most drastic weight loss takes place over a months, or years as in Christine’s case.

Be clear, I’m not advocating the Taco Bell Diet as the ideal weight loss program. But any step to provide more less-unhealthy choices and bring attention to caloric and fat values is a good one. Especially for a fast food franchise.

New Features, FitFeud for Business, Survey…

Happy New Year, FitFeuders. It’s been awhile since our last update, so we’ll dive right in to all the fun stuff we’ve been up to.

New Features

We’ve made a ton of improvements to FitFeud, including:

• Taunt Store – Let your league know you mean business by sending taunts to your competitors. They’ll never know what hit them!
• Multiple Leagues – You can now start and/or join multiple leagues.
• League Talk – Talk smack (or give encouragement, ha!) to your FitFeud competitors.
• Weekly Winners & Losers – Keep yourself motivated week in and week out. No one wants to be at the bottom of the list.
• And more…

FitFeud for Business

Wouldn’t you love it if your office did a FitFeud? So would we! FitFeud can help businesses raise productivity, improve morale, and increase participation in existing wellness programs.

Tell your HR, Wellness, or Benefits director to bring the power of FitFeud to your organization. Or they can contact us at biz@fitfeud.com.

One Minute Survey

All of the above is based on your feedback, so we’d really appreciate it you’d take our super-short survey. There are only a handful of questions, so it should take you a minute or less to complete.

Friday Fun: Santa’s Workout Video

As we know from picture books, legend, and the local mall, Santa could probably stand to drop a few pounds. If only for the sake of making Rudolph’s and the rest of the reindeer’s work a little lighter!

Thanks to our friends over at the recently relaunched ThatsFit.com, we have an inside look into Santa’s training camp (and other funny Santa fitness videos):

Burgers aren’t all bad. But all of these are.

As a loyal Five Guys Burger and Fries fan (they started in DC, and that’s where FitFeud is based), I’m relieved to not see any of their fare listed in this Yahoo!/Men’s Health article, 6 Worst Fast-Food Burgers (and What You Should Eat Instead!).

I’ve always maintained, as the article does as well, that burgers themselves aren’t horrible from a nutritional standpoint. They are good sources or protein and can be relatively low in fat.

That said, even if you aren’t trying to lose weight, we’d recommend staying away from the worst burger on the list. Burger King’s Triple Whopper with Cheese clocks in at 1,250 calories, 84 grams of fat (3.5 trans fat), and 1,600 mg of sodium. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

If you’re looking for a leg up in your FitFeud weight loss competition, now you know where to suggest your competitors go for lunch.

Obesity-related Headline of the Day

Scanning the day’s news, and this headline over at Engadget caught my eye:

McDonald’s WiFi will be free like obesity starting January

I’m not exactly sure what it means (Obesity is free? I guess so, but you sure do pay for it.), but it definitely grabbed my attention. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Read the whole post to see what they’re talking about.

Nutrition & exercise in DC, Baltimore schools

This article in the Washington Post today about a DC Council bill that would require DC’s public and charter schools to serve fresh, local produce and dramatically expand physical education programs shows that people are starting to get the message that just like anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns, we must teach proper nutrition and exercise to children if we expect them to grow into adults with healthy habits.

The article also reminded me of the impassioned speech given by Tony Geraci, director of food and nutrition for the Baltimore City Public Schools, at TedXMidatlantic this year. Tony is “a man on a mission to rid the world of bad school food.” Tony’s style is in your face, no nonsense, pull no punches, and that’s why we like him so much at FitFeud.

Tony realizes, like we do, that the situation is dire and things need to be done differently if we expect meaningful change.

Check out Tony’s speech below. I hope it will inspire you as much as it inspired me.

FitFeud Success Story

Awhile back a successful FitFeud competitor shared the below story with me, reprinted here with permission.

I have had a lifelong love/hate relationship with running. I ran cross country for a couple years in high school, but never really enjoyed it. I liked being on the team, but always hated running while I did it. The cheapskate in me loves running because it’s free, but it was always one of those “I’ll do this because it’s good for me” type of things. Over the last ten years I probably went running about 10-15 times per year on average.

Over the last two weeks I went running 11 days out of 14 and loved it.

It started after I had a bad week in the FitFeud and went from being down 4lbs to only being down 0.5lbs! I gained everything back on opening day of the football season. This ticked me off and I went for a 2 mile run the next day and couldn’t believe how good the run felt. I intentionally took it really slow, but in my 15 years of on-again/off-again running I never felt that good. 2 miles turned into 3, 3 into 4, and just last Saturday I ran for 5.86 miles.

I attribute the success to a new running pattern where I start very slow and gradually bring up my heart rate, along with being in slightly better shape due to a soccer league I played in once a week over the summer. My wife says I am crazy and that it’s 100% because of the FitFeud. She said the peer motivation to keep going is what pushed me to keep doing it. It’s hard to argue that it played a big part, so thanks.

These sorts of stories prove the effectiveness and the benefits of FitFeud, and we are so proud to be able to help people like this. If you have a FitFeud success story to tell, please let us know.

Obesity Epidemic Cancels Out Anti-Smoking Gains

A day rarely goes by without some news popping up about the nation’s obesity problem. This morning, I happened upon a piece on NPR.org that states that the obesity epidemic is on pace to wipe out the gains in health and life expectancy made by lower smoking rates.

The article quotes Dr. Allison Rosen, who thinks that we can look to the anti-smoking campaign to help us with fighting obesity. Interestingly, Dr. Rosen supports financial incentives to encourage people to lose weight, which she thinks will be just as effective as the high tax rates on cigarettes were on getting people to quit smoking.

“Rosen favors financial incentives for reaching weight-loss goals or paying for some weight-loss medication. But mostly, she says, Americans need to focus on diet and exercise, or they could be paying with the quality and length of their lives.”