Hi everybody Monica Reinagle

Monika Reinagel here welcome to the nutrition divas quick and dirty tips

for eating well and feeling fabulous and today I have some tips on what we could all do to help stem the tide of childhood obesity.

You know, I really have to applaud First Lady Michelle Obama for making childhood obesity one of her keystone

initiatives. The number of obese kids in the US has tripled over the last 30 years, and today

one in every five kids is obese and a great many more are overweight.

Not only is this a cruddy way to spend your childhood, but overweight kids are highly likely to become overweight adults, battling both their weight and the associated health problems for a lifetime.

Now, just as with the obesity epidemic among adults, the problem of childhood obesity is complex and tenacious.

It's more than we're going to be able to tackle in a five minute podcast, obviously.

But you have to start somewhere.

And if you're concerned about your child's weight, start here.

Number one, cut down on sweet beverages, way down.

Of all the less than healthy foods that kids consume,

soda and other sweetened beverages, including juice and sports drinks, may be the worst. They have no nutritional value. They contain a lot of

calories but they don't make a dent on hunger and 100% of the calories they

contain are in the form of refined sugar, probably the most damaging type of

calories you can consume.

Kids consume about twice as much refined sugar as the generally recommended maximum, and

about half of it comes in the form of sweetened beverages.

Simply eliminating or dramatically limiting these drinks is a no-brainer. Now soda is

obviously a problem but you also want to be on guard against sweetened

drinks that masquerade as healthy. If you've been listening to this podcast for

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