9 a.m. Welcome
“Both childhood obesity and childhood hunger go hand in hand,” an experienced advisor to Philadelphia food recovery projects, teacher for innovative sustainability and researcher on food security, water security and global food waste, said.
Steven M. Finn, along with many other professionals, gathered throughout the day on Fri., Feb. 20 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Grace Hall Atrium to discuss the convergence and significance of childhood hunger and obesity.
An exercise science and health promotion associate professor, Maria Elena Hallion, Ph.D., opened for the occasion and introduced Sandra Hassink, M.D., President of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Medical Director of the AAP Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight.
The function was in the process of being planned about a year ago when both Hallion and Hassink met to discuss the convergence of child obesity and hunger. They asked one simple question: “What can we do?”
“We decided that we needed to have a bigger conversation,” Hallion said.
Hassink started off the discussions by addressing the core of the issue, which is nutrition followed by healthy relationships and environments.
“Healthy food is a foundation of growth and development and is a foundation of life-long health,” Hassink said.
9:15 a.m. “Hunger: An Unwanted Guest at the Table”
The vice president of strategic policy and partnership who is part of the academy of nutrition and dietetics, jumped into the first topic of the day.
Mary Pat Raimondi, R.D., discussed the nutritional and statistical aspects of the issue, revealing the topics of energy balance in children and how they consume excessive intakes of fats, which is malnourishing to their bodies.
As Raimondi flipped through her slides, she showed how much larger today’s meal portions have grown in comparison to forty years ago and how much more society goes out to eat as opposed to enjoying home cooked meals.
As for policy efforts on the government level, she spoke greatly of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, Healthy People 2020, Healthy Weight Commitment, SNAP, AARP, Meals on Wheels and dietary guidelines as well as school meals and the impact they have on an individual’s health.
Because of Acts and positive attributes such as these, “Over 6 trillion calories less are in our food supply because they worked with food scientists,” Raimondi said.
“Well why should we even care?” said Raimondi. “We’re going to care for a lot of reasons: for childhood development, education, health [and because] all these things play into childhood hunger.”
Raimondi also showed the links between performance in school with malnourished children and how it can truly effect the rest of their lives as well as the cost of $167 billion for hunger, annually.
Last, she showed how easy it is to go down the wrong path of convenience when choosing foods and products, relative to the economy and poverty line, that can greatly damage one’s health and how the biggest growing segment of hunger in America is college students.
“Childhood Obesity: An Anthropological Perspective on a Global Phenomenon”
The director of the W.M. Krogman Center for Childhood Growth and Development and anthropologist discussed in the second aspect of the event on the evolutionary process, climate change and how childhood obesity and hunger greatly affect one’s growth and development.
“Our brain is the most important organ of our body and we need to understand that because that feeds right back into obesity, surprisingly enough,” Dr. Solomon Katz said.
Dr. Katz’s first slide included images of a human skull of an estimated four year old child, which was found in South Africa. This skull is of importance because of the size of the brain that it had held, which was extraordinarily large for their age, compared to those of a child’s, today.
“Climate change is really influencing our ability as a world to feel ourselves,” Katz said. “We’re [in a time] of revolutionary changes in diet that are going to be necessary for us to survive.”
Katz connected his environmental stats with one another by showing what environmental issues are likely to occur for society’s future and how these changes can greatly affect and damage the health of our community.
He then continued to provide information on how the use of fire changed the homosapean’s way of eating forever. “Controlling the use of fire meant that you could take and exploit new sides of our food,” Katz said. “The primary thing that you can do with fire and food is that you can heat it up and that changes the composition [and] changes a cooked starch, [which is] digestible right away in our mouths and an uncooked starch takes a long time to digest in our mouths. Cooking a starch and gelatinizing it remarkably sets the enzymes up in our saliva to dissolve that into sugar.”
Katz then concluded his speech with facts on the ages of maturity and how they are linked with child obesity as well as pharmaceutical treatments in testing.
“Building the Foundations of Child Health: Addressing the Triple Threat of Obesity, Food Insecurity and Hunger”
The managing director and co-founder of ResponsEcology, a change management consulting firm which helps organizations to reduce waste, shared information with how food waste is a global opportunity.
“If you pick up a newspaper, you can get a sense that there’s an increase in conversation about food and the food system and there should be, as we have to feed 2 billion more people by 2050, without destroying the environment in a process,” Steven M. Finn said.
Finn continued to provide information on the topic by showing that 30 percent of the world’s population is obese, which is quickly growing to 50 percent. This leaves obesity at one of the top three social burdens created by man.
He then released information on the opportunity in wasted food and what one can simply learn by looking in the trash can at the excess food and what healthier items were untouched. Looking at the industry aspect, many grocery stores have an excess variety and stocking, due to pressure for perfection, while all other imperfect yet edible items may be tossed.
“Both globally and domestically we waste an awful lot of food,” Finn said. “The World Resources Institute estimates that if we cut food waste and losses in half, we can make up to 22 percent of the estimated calorie shortfall that we expect by 2050.”
Finn then finished up with hopeful words of educational efforts on food recovery, long term benefits, enhance partnerships, realizing the value of our food and to create this topic into national priority with urgency.
