Who’s at Fault with Youth Obesity?

We’ve all heard about the “childhood obesity epidemic,” but the truth is it’s not about kids who are too lazy to exercise or parents who are too lazy to cook healthy food. It’s about the ways that we’ve built our communities and designed our food system over the last fifty years. Why don’t our schools stay open after hours so that families have a safe place to hang out and play? Why don’t local stores offer anything besides liquor, cigarettes, and junk food? The 40 youth leaders who run werefedup.com get that obesity is a lot more complicated than people making bad choices, and they’re doing something about it.

Let’s tip the scales after the jump!

Imagine this: you’re a teenager in South L.A. It’s a beautiful summer day and you and your friends decide to put the video games down and head outside to play soccer. There’s a park a few blocks away, but in order to get there you’ll have to cross three busy streets with no crosswalks. If you make it safely to the park, you’ll probably have to clean up the broken glass and used condoms before you can get that game of soccer started. Since you’re planning on exercising, you want to grab a healthy snack on the way to the park. Problem is, the only options in your neighborhood are fast food and liquor stores. Maybe you make it to the park, maybe you decide to stay inside. Either way, this story points out a lot of the problems that have led to obesity rates as high as 40% among youth in some low income communities of color.

The crew at werefedup.com knows that these stories need to be told in order for people to understand the real reasons so many of us are overweight and obese. So they’ve created a social networking site where youth can share stories, photos, and videos exposing things like the food industry’s lies and nasty secret ingredients, and the ways that not having safe places to be active hurts our health. There’s a “rehab” group for kids trying to quit drinking soda, and there’s lots of information about ways for youth to stand up and fight for policies that can improve the choices we have in our schools and neighborhoods. Go check out werefedup.com, make a profile, tell your friends, and get started fighting for change in your community. You could save a lot of lives in the process.

Posted by:

Ali Uscilka