Engage Her: Activating Women and MultiCultural Communities

Diabetes is a serious disease that is affecting people of all races and ages.  It has no boundaries.  More alarming it is affecting individuals at a younger age.  Previously, Diabetes II was known as an adult onset diabetes but now with the obesity epidemic, Diabetes II is being diagnosed at an earlier age.  The symptoms include blurred vision, frequent infections and even tingling or numbness in the hands or feet.  Since diabetes often goes undiagnosed, it is important to take preventive steps to decrease the chances of being affected by this silent disease.  If diabetes runs in your family, if you are overweight or if you exhibit symptoms that seem suspicious visit your doctor and tell them about the symptoms.

Today the U.S. Government announced that our country has more than 70 million or 26.7% of population’s adults are obese. It is considered to be a major public health threat by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control. Over 400,000 people were surveyed and the results and numbers are huge. In 9 states, over 30% of their population is considered obese. There is increasing concern and effort to address this situation as obesity is directly related to increased heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancers.

The survey also reported that multicultural communities were especially hard hit. African Americans were most likely to be obese with 36.8% of African American men and 41% of African American women were considered to be obese. Hispanics were reporting 30% obesity in their populations. With women providing most of the health care support, food preparation and education to our families, it is important that we begin to educate and change the way we eat and exercise within our families. Many multicultural families continue to prepare traditional cultural foods that use high fats, sodium, carbohydrates that can lead to increased obesity and related diseases. We need to explore utilizing substitute ingredients that are healthier and begin to address this obesity situation.

This further supports the work that First Lady Michelle Obama is undertaking with her national “Let’s Move” campaign aimed at seriously reducing Childhood Obesity in a generation. Let’s take a look at what our children, parents and families are eating and determine how we can begin to modify our eating and exercise habits in order to increase our families’ longevity and health.

Fast food is a term some take seriously, and some just don’t care about. To me, fast food is bad and I don’t see how people can sell it to other people: it can cause obesity, heart failure, and other serious illnesses.

Is it really hard to sell good, healthy food to the world? It’s not only the fast food restaurants but the grocery stores around you. If you live in an affluent area you have the best chances of having healthy and nutritious selections of foods in the stores. But if you live in a low income environment you’re likely to have limited selections and non-nutritious foods to choose from, which forces you to buy bad foods that can cause health problems.

I’m the type of person who craves fast food, candy and other bad foods. But in my house they’re hard to find. When my mom buys food, the meat is turkey, the noodles and bread are made with whole grains, and she buys water not soda. If this cycle were repeated in every person’s house, it would be a good start and there would be fewer obesity patients.

I know many people have so much fast food that they don’t eat anything else. All they crave is fast food if they try avoiding it. That’s a diet you have to work hard at changing if you’re overweight.

Even if you look healthy on the outside you still can be a victim of diabetes. So the best thing is to cut back on the fast food, sweets and pie! Everyone loves pie, but when it comes to your body you’re the only one who can really take care of it.

So when you walk to the store, please think twice about what you’re going to put through your body. Every wrong choice carries consequences.

Thank you for your time,
Tina Gerardo

The dollar menu may sound like a good deal, but I doubt that people understand what fast food contains. It may be convenient to just pick up a burger meal at the nearest burger joint, but it doesn’t provide you the nutrients you need. Eating fast food can eventually lead to major causes to your health due to all the fats and unprocessed meat used to make the food. Fast foods contain so much sodium, fats, and not enough protein. I even notice that some fast food restaurants had a nutrition menu, but is was flipped around and used as a place mat. I mean, why would you make it unnoticeable? It makes it seem like they’re hiding the fact that they know the food is unhealthy. And if you haven’t noticed that low income communities also don’t have the best grocery stores and are unable to get their hands on fresh organic food. Personally, I think it’s unfair that only the wealthy communities are able to get healthy fresh organic foods, while our multicultural community are not. In other words, we’re eating trash. And if you ask any teens why they like fast food, their response is ‘it’s just so good’ but they don’t know that in a few years it can take their life and possibly lead to obesity.

I also find it wrong how meat is being cloned, and we aren’t being informed. Luckily, a law has recently made it possible for us to tell which ones are cloned and organic. But at the same time, cloned meat is unhealthy and can lead to cancer. I’m worried that one day organic meat will be too expensive and the cloned meat will be cheap. That would mean that our community would either eat cloned meat and be unhealthy or be vegetarians since we can’t afford real meat. It is very unfortunate that we aren’t able to get the healthiest foods, but we can fix that by eating home cooked meals that contain vegetables and all the nutrients we need without the excess unhealthy products. I want people to watch what they eat because it can lead to serious health problems and that can effect our communities a lot. I just hope that people will eat healthier and think about their future.

A new law in Santa Clara County, California bans restaurants from giving away free toys with children’s meals exceeding healthy levels of calories, fat, sugar and salt. “This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes,” said the law’s author, Supervisor Ken Yeager. “Obviously, toys in and of themselves do not make children obese. But it is unfair to parents and children to use toys to capture the tastes of children when they are young and get them hooked on eating high-sugar, high-fat foods early in life.”

This new law bans free toys in meals containing more than: 485 calories, 35 percent of their calories from fat, 10 percent from sweeteners, or exceeding 600 mg of sodium. These guidelines follow the children’s health standards set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As a nation we are facing skyrocketing obesity rates among adults and children and in some places 30% of our population are obese, overweight and becoming diabetic, experiencing related coronary disease. We all have to find ways to counteract this unhealthy trend and determine what are some of the contributors to this epidemic. While many critics of this new law say that parents should determine what their children should be eating, it is apparent from looking at the dramatically increasing numbers of adults getting obese, overweight and having associated illnesses that many of the parents are not making the healthiest choices for themselves and their children. If the fast food chains offer healthier meals that meet the guidelines they can continue to offer the promotional toys with the healthier menu offerings. Stay tuned and let’s see how this legislation affects other parts of our nation.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/28/MNLA1D5QFV.DTL#ixzz0mUssRXNc

Census forms and your money!

To help promote participation in the Census, we’re announcing our new Text Message campaign: Text FreeCensus to 53137 and register your name in a drawing to win a FREE iPod Touch! Starting today, we’re announcing it to all our partners and the public.

While the deadline for sending in the Census has passed, the government is now getting ready to send representatives to the doors of people who failed to send in their census forms. They will be sending them up to several times to ensure we count everyone who lives in the United States regardless of their citizenship status. It is important that we encourage all our families and friends to open the doors and answer the questions to ensure they are counted in the Census to receive federal funding for their communities.

Remember: Text FreeCensus to 53137 to register to win a FREE iPod Touch and receive periodic messages.

Last week First Lady Michelle Obama was in Philadelphia to talk about the Let’s Move campaign which is focused on ending the epidemic of childhood obesity in our country in a generation. She was in Philadelphia because that is the city and communities that came together six years ago to take a collaborative stand to fight obesity and provide the roadmap for the rest of our nation. They decided that they needed to bring fresh, health affordable foods to all their communities. To take a collected approach to solve the deep problems and issues that lead to obesity in our communities.

In addition, the government just announced the Healthy Food Financing Initiative. It is a multi-million dollar public and private investment to eliminate food deserts in America within seven years. Food deserts are those areas in our communities throughout the country that lack access to fresh, affordable food and distribution points. It is so powerful to see our government not only talk about the need to fight obesity, but put funding and investment dollars to ensure that we bring real solutions that our citizens across the country in the communities that need it the most. We’ll bringing you more details about this program as it unfolds across the country and into our communities. Kudos to the President and the First Lady for this amazing and profound work.