Helping Kids Fight Obesity
Best Online Info Sources

Need trustworthy, up-to-date information on how to help your kids —or grandkids—avoid obesity? If so, you’ll want to take a look at the top-notch sources shown below. Sara Wilson, a registered dietitian and nutrition information specialist with the Food and Nutrition Information Center at ARS’s National Agricultural Library, in Beltsville, Maryland, selected these highly reliable sources as among the best.

empowerME
empowerme2b.org

This kid-friendly venue helps youngsters motivate each other to be healthier by participating in polls, joining in conversations with peers about the challenges of—and solutions to—obesity and, perhaps best of all, sharing their own success stories. This site was created by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which, at its own web pages (healthiergeneration.org), offers practical tips—like how parents can talk to their kids about obesity—and much more.

Nourish Interactive
nourishinteractive.com
and in Spanish at: nourishinteractive.com/languages/es

Vetted by nurses and registered dietitians, this energetic site teems with online games for kids, plus blogs, newsletters, health-hint calendars, lesson plans, and worksheets for parents and educators—all instantly accessible via a free log-in.

SmallStep Kids
smallstep.gov/kids/flash/index.html

Kids visiting this U.S. Department of Health and Human Services site can take small steps to better health with fun games, quizzes, and TV public-service ads designed to entertain while encouraging healthy eating and physical activity.

Kidnetic.com
kidnetic.com

Find yet more games here, plus recipes and other content offered by the International Food Information Council to help kids move more and eat better.

Kidshealth.org
kidshealth.org

Health and medical experts share kid-focused information on all facets of health—including overweight and obesity—for this graphics-rich, easy-to-navigate Nemours Foundation site.

Girlshealth.gov
tinyurl.com/GirlsHealth

Find smart choices for ordering fast food, or advice on how to achieve a healthy weight, at this award-winning, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services site for girls ages 10 to 16.

Weight Management and Obesity Resource List (2009)
nal.usda.gov/fnic/weight.pdf

Concerned about your child’s weight? You may want to go directly to page 24 of this comprehensive, helpful collection. Later, peruse the rest: more than 150 books, brochures, and articles on weight management and obesity, all carefully selected by the National Agricultural Library’s Food and Nutrition Information Center.

Weight Management for Youth
www.nutrition.gov/youthweight

More than a dozen links to weight-management-oriented websites specifically for kids, teens, and parents are offered here.

We Can!
nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/wecan

Online training and other aids featured at this National Institutes of Health site may help parents get their kids to make better food choices, be more active, and spend less time watching TV.

MyPyramid.gov
mypyramid.gov

The Pyramid helps users achieve and maintain a healthy weight by explaining what—and how much—to eat from each of the food groups and by providing handy tools, such as menu planners, for creating healthy meals.

Healthy Youth! Childhood Obesity
cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides links to sites with science-based strategies that schools and communities can use to tackle the obesity epidemic; see also this site’s statistics on the prevalence of childhood obesity.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center To Prevent Childhood Obesity
reversechildhoodobesity.org

Get inspired by this organization’s array of strategies to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by the year 2015. Use the “Reversing the Epidemic” tab to find the “What Individuals and Families Can Do” link, offering practical suggestions that might work in your community.

"Helping Kids Fight Obesity" was published in the March 2010 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.