What do You Bring?

The excitement was in the air at Francisco F. “Pancho” Medrano Middle School in Dallas today as TDA launched the ‘Texans Bring It!” campaign. The campaign is designed to build on the Three E’s of Healthy Living -- Education, Exercise and Eating Right. By asking students, “what do you bring?” to help live a healthier lifestyle, we are encouraging them to take an active role in staying fit and eating right.

Our schools are doing a great job of providing healthy options for students, but we must move beyond the lunchroom and into the classrooms and living rooms across Texas if we’re going to win the war on obesity. In the last two decades, the obesity rates have doubled across America. These statistics are alarming and we must partner together to stop this trend.

By teaching our children the 3E’s we can help them build a path to a healthy lifestyle that they can follow through adulthood. Check out www.TexansBringIt.com for more information on this exciting campaign. I want to thank our partners, including USDA and school districts across Texas as we move forward and help “Texans Bring It!”

Obesity Awareness Week: Genetics Not Solely To Blame for Obesity

The Texas Department of Agriculture's Chief Nutrition Coordinator, Paige Abernathy, will be guest blogging throughout Texas Obesity Awareness Week. Read her blog to find out interesting obesity facts, and tips on losing weight.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains that genetics can play a role in obesity; however, behavior can also affect a person's weight. It appears that having a certain combination of genes may make an individual more susceptible to being overweight or obese, and outside factors such as low levels of physical activity and an abundant food supply are required for the issue to be expressed.

Genetics do not control individual behavior. For more information on genetics and obesity visit the CDC Web site.

Obesity Awareness Week: The Impact of Environment

The Texas Department of Agriculture's Chief Nutrition Coordinator, Paige Abernathy, will be guest blogging throughout Texas Obesity Awareness Week. Read her blog to find out interesting obesity facts, and tips on losing weight.

The environment you live in can make balancing your energy and diet easier or more difficult.

Things to look for to improve the balance between eating and exercising: sidewalks and streetlights that make walking in your neighborhood safer; grocery stores within walking or biking distance; worksite fitness facilities; restaurants that serve reasonable portion sizes; and schools that limit unhealthy choices. Request and support local policy that creates these types of environments.

For information on the nutrition standards for Texas schools visit the Healthy Living section of www.TexasAgriculture.gov.

Obesity Awareness Week: Energy Imbalance

The Texas Department of Agriculture's Chief Nutrition Coordinator, Paige Abernathy, will be guest blogging throughout Texas Obesity Awareness Week. Read her blog to find out interesting obesity facts, and tips on losing weight.

An energy imbalance is simply consuming more calories than you expend through daily activity. To prevent obesity, you should be more physically active and monitor portions and calories.

If you eat more than usual one day, don’t forget to get in some extra exercise. It’s a balancing act that will pay off in the end. Try to keep your portion size down, and your exercise level up.

For individual nutrition recommendations and tips for the whole family visit www.MyPyramid.gov.

Texas Obesity Awareness Week 2009

The Texas Department of Agriculture's Chief Nutrition Coordinator, Paige Abernathy, will be guest blogging throughout Texas Obesity Awareness Week. Read her blog to find out interesting obesity facts, and tips on losing weight.

It’s Obesity Awareness week across Texas! This week will be dedicated to making a difference in the lives of all Texans. The number of overweight and obese Texans has been steadily growing over the past 20 years. Obesity can have a devastating impact on an individual, both physically and mentally, and on the community through the impact of health care costs and lost work productivity. Knowledge is power, and the better we all understand the obesity issue, the more chance we have at changing our fate.

Some Interesting Obesity Stats You Should Know

• In 2007, nearly 66 percent of Texas adults were overweight or obese.
• In 2007, 32 percent of Texas high-school students were overweight or obese.
• If the current trends continue, 20 million or 75 percent of Texas adults will be overweight or obese by the year 2040, and the cost to Texas will quadruple from $10.5 billion today to as much as $39 billion by 2040.
• According to the National Nutritional Health Survey, the prevalence of childhood obesity was greater in Texas in 2004-2005 than it was in the entire U.S. in 2003-2004. The overall prevalence of overweight and obesity in Texas schoolchildren was 42 percent for fourth-graders, 39 percent for eighth-graders and 36 percent for eleventh-graders in 2004-2005.

You can get more information on these stats here.

Check back throughout the week for weight loss and obesity prevention tips.

Power Up with School Breakfast Public Service Announcement

As Texas Agriculture Commissioner, I have made it my focus to encourage Texas children to adopt the 3 E’s of Healthy Living – Education, Exercise and Eating Right. This simple concept will not only help children feel better and live longer, but will also assist us in battling a growing childhood obesity problem in our state.


I recently worked with C.D. Fulkes Middle School students in Round Rock to create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) that talks about the advantages of eating a healthy breakfast at school. The PSA, which is currently running on TV stations statewide, is really fun and features animated characters, Mr. Breakfast and YoGurl. You can watch the PSA here.

A Collaborative Effort to Fight Childhood Obesity

In Aggieland on Monday, I met with some of the leaders in the fight against childhood obesity. We brainstormed on ways to tackle the growing obesity problem in the Lone Star State.

Bill Ludwig, U.S. Department of Agriculture Southwest Region Administrator for Food Nutrition Services, coordinated the round-table discussion that included representatives from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, Texas AgriLife Extension Family and Consumer Sciences, the Agatston Research Foundation and The OrganWise Guys health education program . We shared ideas on how to decrease obesity rates among our younger generations, and I am excited to say there are already some great efforts underway to help combat this terrible epidemic.

As you may already know, Texas ranks sixth in the nation in childhood obesity, and in 2005 Texas businesses spent an estimated $3.3 billion on costs related to obesity. This is a trend we must change.

Although Texas schools are already doing an outstanding job of fighting obesity, the realty is we are losing our children after school, during the weekends and in the summers. Through a collaborative effort we can all help Texas children by encouraging them to adopt the 3Es of Healthy Living: Education, Exercise and Eating right. These components are critical to winning the war on obesity.

The upcoming legislative session will give us many opportunities to make gains in our fight against obesity. To find out more about TDA’s request to the state legislature to implement healthy lifestyles for Texas children, visit www.tda.state.tx.us and look for the link on the right called Legislative Appropriations Request.

TDA appreciates all our partners and their investment in healthy lifestyles, and I hope we can work together to improve Texans’ health and end this obesity crisis.