• Background: America's kids are fatter than ever
• Recent Legislation: 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauth. Act

Background

• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over the past 20 years, the proportion of overweight children in the United States has tripled. The figure exceeds 17% of the population under 18 years. Diseases that used to be limited to the overweight adult population are now more prevalent in America's youth. Studies indicate the this generation may be the first to live less than any previous generation.
• Contributing factors in these health outcomes have been a decline in daily exercise (down from 42% in 1991 to 28% in 2004 among high schoolers) and greater consumption of snack foods.

Recent Legislation

• On June 30, 2004 Congress passed the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act. It requires each local educational agency that participates in the National School Lunch Act or the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to develop a local wellness policy by July 1, 2006 and implement it by the "first day of the school year beginning after June 30, 2006."
• The results of the law have been inconsistent. Some states have set standards for all districts that purge soda and junk foods from campuses and increase the hours of physical education in the curriculum. Some states have given considerable leeway to districts, many of which have only made half-hearted changes, or given an exorbitant amount of time to implement changes. Oregon, for example, allows its districts up to 10 years to meet new requirements for physical education.
• According to Action for Healthy Kids, a nonprofit organization, studied 112 schools and found that less than half had made any attempt to comply with the federal regulation.