Earlier in the program, RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey noted declining childhood obesity rates in numerous locales across the nation and outlined the five key priorities her organization will support over the next decade with their $500 million investment:
• Ensure that all children enter kindergarten at a healthy weight
• Make a healthy school environment the norm and not the exception
• Make physical activity a daily experience for children
• Make healthy food and drink the affordable, available and desired choice in all communities
• Eliminate the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among 0-5 year olds.
Notably absent from the list of priorities was any specific focus on ending food and drink marketing to children, which many public health experts believe is key to ensuring that children maintain a healthy weight and good eating habits. Also, while the narrow focus on eliminating sugar-sweetened beverage consumption from a specific age range (0 to 5 years old) is understandable from a foundation’s perspective, any further gains within that age group will surely disappear as children age beyond kindergarten and sugary drinks become readily available and heavily marketed where children and teens congregate (including the Internet). Another advocacy organization or foundation would be wise to step in and simultaneously fund initiatives designed to reduce marketing and consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks among older children and teens.
It remains to be seen if RWJF will focus on sustainable policy change through legislation over the next decade. Some of their past initiatives have favored voluntary measures — for example, the food and beverage industry’s Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, which announced it had voluntarily cut 6.4 trillion calories from our food supply — mostly from heavily processed foods including a variety of chips, beverages and sweets. (To date, there is no evidence that this has had any impact on childhood or adult obesity rates.) While voluntary initiatives can be helpful, they will be extremely difficult to sustain once the First Lady leaves the White House and the spotlight fades from child nutrition and health.