Robert Nicolosi:
Nicolosi helps battle against childhood obesity
By Michelle Bradley

Childhood obesity is a rapidly growing issue that is swarming the adolescents of the United States. Robert J. Nicolosi is the Director of the Center for Health and Disease Research at UMass Lowell and is currently working on several ways to prevent obesity in children. Nicolosi is a man with a mission but he says in order to prevent obesity from b ecoming more common, families need to be the first people to get involved with the children's eating habits and physical activity. "...at home you could spend more time to produce healthy foods, you could increase physical activity, you could reduce the time kids watch television," stated Nicolosi, briefly listing a few ways that parents can help their children live healthier. Getting schools involved will also help prevent obesity from rising. "In the school what you have to do is make physical education mandatory." According to Nicolosi, 50-70% of physical education is being reduced or in worse cases, eliminated completely. "...the schools are focused on increasing their exam grades or preparing students to pass MCAS." Many schools have been effected by budget cuts, leading schools to have to decide between the education students should be getting or programs like physical education. "90% of parents and teachers want physical education in the classroom, but that's one of first things that gets cut when there's a budget crunch." Although both the parents and schools do play a huge role in preventing obesity, it hasn't been easy competing with beverage and junk food companies. Especially in schools, children and adolescents have access to these not so healthy foods through vending machines. "...the whole issue of vending machines is a real serious one...many schools have this 'right to pour' contract with various beverage companies..." Nicolosi also mentioned that beverage companies contracts with schools can be as much as $4-5 million thus being a major source of income for the schools. So what exactly is the University doing to help the community around us to prevent this? Through numerous outreach programs like GEAR UP, the university is trying to get people aware of these serious health issues and how to prevent them. A new branch added to CHDR is the Division of Preventative Medicine, which allows the university to develop nutrition and exercise programs into schools. "We're engaging them so kids can read labels, nutrition labels, even some parents can't read them, but it's got to start somewhere." Other ways of reaching out to the kids and the schools is by teaching children how garden and grow their own food, cooking lessons, and even touring grocery stores. " The other thing we're doing is we've involved Market Basket of Lowell, and every so often we bring a dozen or children, and they walk them through the different food varieties...the healthy ones, the not so healthy ones." Nicolosi's study on preventing obesity in children and adolescents is an uphill struggle that will need families, schools, and businesses to help out. By taking small steps in the home and in the classroom to teach children how to live healthier, the growing issue will halted and these children will grow up to be healthy adults to thanks of people like Nicolosi.