“The risk of obesity starts early in life. Over half of obese children become overweight by the age of 2, and approximately one in five children are overweight or obese by their 6th birthday.”
– The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity
Now, there is a new website and support for child care professionals.
As a child care provider, you have the powerful opportunity to instill healthy choices that could help prevent childhood obesity from the start. With about 12 million babies and young children in child care nationwide, we can’t afford to wait.
Today’s kids are more likely to be overweight or obese.
Three times more children are obese today than just 30 years ago. Now, nearly a third of kids in America are overweight or obese. The rate skyrockets to almost 40% in African American and Hispanic communities. Plus, more and more children are being diagnosed with obesity-related conditions that were traditionally only seen in adults — like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Even more disheartening, many of these kids will experience serious conditions like heart disease, cancer, and stroke as adults.
You can be a child care champion for healthy choices.
Because you’ve dedicated your career to taking care of young children, you have the opportunity to help turn these frightening statistics around. As kids’ bodies and brains develop, they can form unhealthy food preferences and habits that are hard to break. That’s why the First Lady is launching Let’s Move! Child Care — a nationwide call-to-action that empowers child care providers, like you, to make positive health changes in children, early on, that could last a lifetime.
