Will NFL PLAY 60 make a difference in childhood obesity?

Is the NFL doing their part to tackle obesity?

If you were like me and tens of millions of other Americans on Thanksgiving last week, then your eyes were glued to the television set all day watching the Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, and all the rest of the teams playing that day entertain us from noon until night. It’s a tradition that has become so ingrained in our culture that advertisers EXPECT to have a large television audience that day. And the National Football League (NFL) which brings such joy and happiness to football fans from coast to coast know this, too, which is why they proudly rolled out a new public service announcement for their NFL PLAY 60 program.

Did you see these commercials on Thanksgiving and then again during the Sunday NFL games? You couldn’t help but notice them blaring across the screen in all these spots about NFL PLAY 60:

“Childhood obesity affect 1 out of 3 children in the U.S.” a graphic reads.

Then they show video of NFL football players like Super Bowl champion Eli Manning from the New York Giants in their hometowns encouraging kids to just get out there and play for 60 minutes a day. Launched in October 2007, NFL PLAY 60 is a national youth health and fitness campaign designed to encouraged kids to beat back childhood obesity by increasing their activity level. In this generation of video games, computers, and other such activities that barely give children any exercise at all, this seems like a great idea, right?

Weeeeeeelllll, yes and no.

Let me start by praising the NFL for coming up with this program. Their stated goal is to help kids today become “the most active and healthy generation” in American history and to “reverse the childhood obesity trend by 2012.” A daunting task to say the least, but one that I am sure the NFL would be proud to say they played a part in bringing about. Certainly getting kids to wiggle and move a lot more than they do isn’t such a bad thing. I wish I did more of it when I was a child and maybe I wouldn’t have been as fat as I was as a kid.

But obesity is not just about exercise–I have become more and more convinced that you really have to begin with the right diet. This point was really driven home for me during my spin class this week when the super-fit instructor started ranting about how it doesn’t really matter how you eat as long as you get in your exercise each day. She bragged about eating whatever she wanted on Thanksgiving Day and will be proudly eating a slice of birthday cake at her daughter’s party this weekend. On and on she went talking about how diets stink and you don’t really need to worry about what you eat–just simply exercise it all off!

Oh, if only it were that easy for most of us. I don’t know about you, but if I consumed as many carbohydrates as the typical American does in a day and especially on Thanksgiving, then I would be so sick and tired and hungry that I couldn’t stop eating. What this fitness instructor at my gym and the people behind NFL PLAY 60 fail to realize is that the kinds of food these kids put in their mouths to fuel their exercise will determine their ability to manage their weight and health properly or not.

Simply going out to “play an hour a day” on an insufficient diet full of garbage like potato chips, French fries, candy bars, and soda will not be enough (that’s what was so wrong with the “R Gym” concept at McDonald’s). The negative effect of all that insulin release brought on by such a poor diet cannot be overcome with simple physical activity. You have to mitigate the damage for those children who are especially insulin resistant with a metabolic predisposition for sensitivity to sugar and carbs. That’s a whole lot more kids than I think anyone wants to admit! And a reduced sugar/carbohydrate diet would go a LONG way towards eradicating childhood obesity as Fred Hahn shared in my recent interview with him.

This subject of childhood obesity has become too much like a political idea–a lot of people want to throw money at it to see what works when all that is REALLY needed is better education. Financial backing like what Veronica Atkins is doing at the Atkins Foundation of research into REAL solutions for childhood obesity is an excellent use of resources to get more people to look at the role diet plays in this problem. We’ve already seen evidence from the research community that sugar-free schools reduce obesity rates and I expect even more similar news to continue to come out in the coming years.

In fact, in my research for this post I came across this study I previously blogged about published in the October 2006 issue of the British Medical Journal that found there was no significant improvement in the BMI of children over a period of one year who played for 30 minutes three times a week and those that didn’t. The researchers made an interesting conclusion regarding this fascinating finding: “Changes in other behaviors, including diet, may also be necessary.”

Changes in diet become NECESSARY. Did you see that? Once again, it goes back to a good quality healthy diet to control obesity, not exercise. That’s not to say exercise isn’t a good thing and that the NFL PLAY 60 doesn’t have SOME merit in terms of conditioning and competitive sportsmanship for children. But for weight loss, it’s better to watch was little Susie or Johnny is putting in their mouths instead. That’s where parental responsibility comes into play and moms and dads should take their role quite seriously. It’s not enough to just watch them getting fatter and fatter every year without fixing the source of the problem.

Obesity in children can indeed be prevented with the purposeful implementation of a healthy controlled-carb nutritional approach and education about why this way of eating is optimal for a growing body. Burn stored body fat, build muscle mass, increase brain function, maintain proper cholesterol levels, stabilize blood sugars, lower blood pressure, and so much more is waiting for children who start livin’ la vida low-carb. Then when they go out and play for 60 minutes a day, they’ll be ready to take on the world!