Obesity Conquered by Education and Nutrition - The YOUtrition Project
The first thing that comes to my mind when making the world a better place, is solving the problem of obesity. Obesity is one of the leading causes of heart disease, and heart disease is responsible for 1 in 4 deaths. Since I am taking two health care classes, this topic is constantly brought up. It is devastating not only to the individuals, but also to the healthcare systems, to friends, and to families. I have read that preventative care and education is a key in changing this obesity trend. So I want to try and come up with a solution to this major problem!
I would like to propose a nutrition education program for people that are at-risk for obesity or are diagnosed as obese. This program would have multiple components. It would have workshops that talk about eating healthy. These workshops would teach people how to create meal plans and stick to them. It would also educate them on reading nutrition labels, understanding good and bad fats, and how eating certain things can affect the body. It would also have an exercise program that builds a tailored exercise plan for the people attending.
A key problem I have noticed is that a lot of people don’t eat healthy because they don’t have access to healthy food, as unhealthy food is often far cheaper. As a solution to this, I would like to create a healthy food shelter, where people could come to get healthy food resources. I would keep this shelter exclusive to the people that have already taken the workshops, to keep people on track with their healthy program. Essentially, my idea is that people would work a shift a week and when they come in to “work,” they would plant some seeds/water a plant/pick the produce from a shared greenhouse. Then, once they put in their “work” for the week, they would have access to the resources being grown in the greenhouse for that week. With their help, we would be able to maintain the healthy food surplus for people to use, while allowing them access to healthy food.
Education + provided resources = better nutrition and lowered obesity rates!
Hi katie,
ReplyDeleteReally interesting idea! I like the workshops where clients get educated on the good/bad fats and also learn how create meal plans. I totally agree with you on how people eat unhealthy food because healthy food is too expensive. The healthy food shelter is a good way to motivate them to eat healthy because its cheaper than buying unhealthy food! This is a great idea because human life expectancy drastically decreases after a human becomes obese. So America needs this, because we have so many obese people!
Hey Katie,
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! I read recently that in the US, we are among the most overfed, but malnourished people in the world. The healthy food shelter is a really smart idea because most people have no connection to the food they eat. By planting and watering they can see the evolution of food and nothing tastes better than a freshly picked fruit or vegetable. Educating people by having them "work" for it is a great way to instill lasting values and hopefully leads to change. Looking forward to your final pitch!
Brendan
Hi Katie,
ReplyDeleteI think you chose a really compelling probelm to solve for today's society a you did a great job at addressing it. When I was reading the first part of your blog post about the workshop, I was thinking "yeah, that's a cool idea, but how can you force people to attend these worshops?" But then when I came across the idea of the healthy food shelter and of the greenhouse, I suddenly felt this project is actually feasible and sustainable. It is a great way to raise awareness among obese people and make them responsible for their own health. I think that we should definitely give more importance to the quality of what we eat rather than its quantity. Apart from that, I don't have any major suggestion, your idea looks great and I look forward to your pitch in class!
Interesting that we both came at opposite ends of the spectrum. I wanted to solve hunger and homelessness and you want to solve obesity. Anyways, I think a key component to your plan is education. A lot of people simply don't know what foods are good for them, and with all of the conflicting information out there about different ingredients in foods and fat levels, etc., it can be difficult to concisely explain.
ReplyDeleteYou should define healthy eating and give a list of foods that could be considered healthy. The idea of a food shelter is great, and I think you could make the amount of food received proportional to the amount of work put in. So if someone works X hours, they get a maximum of Y food.