Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--and My Own Part 8

Once Cornett went public with his story, it was as if a light had been flicked on across Oklahoma City. Suddenly, obesity was "okay to talk about at the dinner table and okay to talk about over the backyard fence and at the water cooler at work and at church," he says. "Seemingly overnight, people were willing to talk about obesity for the very first time in this community."

The mayor did a lot more than talk. Cornett realized that like much of America, his city was ruled by the automobile. So he gathered city planners and asked them to reinvent the city; instead of catering to cars, he wanted to focus on people. As a result, he says, "We're putting brand-new gymnasiums in all forty-five of the inner-city grade schools; we're building health and wellness centers throughout the community for seniors; we're completing our bicycle trail master plan; we're putting in new sidewalks throughout the community; we're putting in a downtown streetcar system to get a head start on ma.s.s transit. We are designing a city that revolves around people and pedestrians."

The restaurant industry has embraced the cause, too. Chefs began offering low-fat options on their menus, and the fast-food industry now advertises its healthier meals and tells consumers how to make better choices.

Even with such a comprehensive approach, the mayor estimates it will take ten years to completely change the city's culture from one that fosters obesity to one that fosters health and wellness. But the payoff has already started. Oklahoma City is now on the Men's Fitness list of fittest cities in America, and the mayor says the changes in the environment have attracted an influx of highly educated twenty-somethings. Jobs have followed. A recent study named Oklahoma City the most entrepreneurial city in the country, with the most start-ups per capita, the lowest unemployment in the United States, and what Cornett calls "a boom economy."4 I totally agree with the advice Cornett offers other government leaders who want to emulate his success. "Most elected officials don't want to preach the message of what you eat and how much you eat because it seems invasive. Many government initiatives on obesity fail because they end up becoming just exercise programs. That shouldn't just be a message for overweight people; that ought to be a message for everybody. I think it's wrong to suggest that obese people can just exercise their way out of obesity. It's about what you eat and how much you eat, and we have not run from that message."

New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg is another public figure who thinks that government has a really important role to play in turning back the tide of obesity. He's my hero because he has gotten out there, ignited a conversation, and has even been sued as he pushes to make this issue a priority.

Under his watch, New York City began requiring chain restaurants with more than fifteen locations to post the calorie counts of their food. At least twenty other cities have followed his example since the law went into effect in 2008. New York also banned trans fat, a solid fat that is a leading cause of heart disease. Other munic.i.p.alities picked up on that idea, too, and after the ball got rolling McDonald's and some of the other fast-food chains decided to eliminate trans fat from all their outlets nationwide.

Bloomberg also called on the New York State legislature to impose a tax on soda. That failed to pa.s.s, but public health officials and researchers say it would have a meaningful effect on how much soda we drink, and I'd like to see other elected officials take up the issue.

The mayor's latest accomplishment was to ban sales of soda and other sugary drinks in containers larger than sixteen ounces in restaurants, movie theaters, sports stadiums, and other entertainment venues. The soft-drink industry, joined by other business groups, sued to halt that regulation in October 2012.

I really admire the example Mayor Bloomberg is setting because politicians just have to make this a priority. Some people accuse me of calling for a "Nanny State" by welcoming the government into our supermarkets and restaurants and now, with my support for the large-size soda ban, even movie theaters. But I contend that the government already plays a real big role in how we eat, especially through the ma.s.sive subsidies it provides to big agriculture. So it is not a new idea to involve government, it's just a matter of changing the way we involve it.

"The fact is, we already have the nanny state, because we've already been told what to eat by the food industry," points out Dr. Robert l.u.s.tig, the pediatric endocrinologist who has called sugar a toxic ingredient. "If you ask me, we'd be better off with a nanny state that has public health, not private profit, as its motive."

We already have the nanny state, because we've already been told what to eat by the food industry . . . we'd be better off with a nanny state that has public health, not private profit, as its motive.

-Robert l.u.s.tig I think the federal government can do a lot more to join the conversation, and to demonstrate the leaders.h.i.+p and political will to change some of the policies that promote obesity. We should all be pus.h.i.+ng our elected officials to act.

Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor, and Donny Deutsch were on Morning Joe one day, and as we were chatting afterward, Donny said, "Can you imagine if we could eradicate obesity? Everything else would follow. Our health care costs would go down, and our health in general would be better. Everything would change in this country."

Can you imagine if we could eradicate obesity? . . . Our health care costs would go down, and our health in general would be better. Everything would change in this country.-Donny Deutsch He's right, which is why obesity needs to be at the top of the agenda in Was.h.i.+ngton. I challenge our politicians to explain why it isn't. Someday soon, instead of saying "economy, economy, economy" we need to start saying "obesity, obesity, obesity." We've got to. Because, as Senator Claire McCaskill points out, the two issues are so closely tied together. "It would be a relatively painless way for our country to soar with a completely sound fiscal footing if we could put a dent in this increasing epidemic of us eating cheap food in portions that could strangle a horse," she says. "Making that food primary in our diets is going to break our country if we're not careful."

One thing our public officials can do is use the bully pulpit, just as First Lady Mich.e.l.le Obama has with her "Let's Move" campaign, which is dedicated to ending childhood obesity. Her initiative includes commonsense strategies to educate parents, provide healthier food in schools, help children become more active, and make sure all families have access to healthy, affordable food.

I believe we also urgently need to change the nation's farm policy, especially the agricultural supports that make processed food much less expensive than most fresh foods. Robert l.u.s.tig maintains that our current approach to crop subsidies makes sweeteners so inexpensive that "80 percent of the food items that are available in the US food supply are currently laced with sugar."

With a lot of research indicating that sugar can make us sick, l.u.s.tig says the government winds up paying twice.

"The government paying for food subsidies is, number one, breaking the bank. We don't need these subsidies. We don't have the Dust Bowl. We don't have farmers who are in trouble. We don't have a hungry population that needs dried, storable food. Number two, all the disease that comes of it, the government ends up paying for in the form of Medicare and Medicaid. So no wonder Medicare is going broke."

Meanwhile, average Americans find it harder to afford a healthy diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, and schools struggle to find the funds to comply with new federal nutritional standards. That tells me we should think more about how government can help make good food less costly than bad food. As Dr. Zeke Emanuel says, "We're not going to be able to raise the cost of school lunches that much, given budget realities, and so we've got to think about how we can bring the price of the healthier food components down."

A lot of people tell me we can do that by overhauling the Farm Bill, which is the key federal legislation guiding agricultural policies in this country. Instead of rewarding huge mega-farms, we should be giving more support to smaller farms, especially organic ones that supply local food networks with fruits and vegetables. If we want families to eat better food, that's where we should be spending public dollars.

I'm very encouraged to have Senator Kirsten Gillibrand sitting on the Agriculture Committee, the first representative from New York in forty years. She takes a vastly different approach toward food issues than senators who hail from states that produce commodity crops, especially corn, soybeans, and rice. I am with her all the way.

Gillibrand says she wants to "create a framework that's focused on having safety nets or insurance for farmers when they go through a storm or a bad weather condition that takes a toll on crops. What we're also hoping to do is enhance programs that are 'farm to fork,' getting whole foods directly into our public schools."

As a mom and a policy maker, Senator Gillibrand is also backing the federal Healthy Foods Financing Initiative. I think that initiative is one of the most important tools for nouris.h.i.+ng the 25 million people in America who live in areas known as "food deserts"; that is, inner-city neighborhoods, rural areas, and other communities where good-quality markets don't exist and people don't have easy access to fresh, healthy foods. This legislation would provide grants to help existing grocery stores, farmers' markets, and food co-ops sell fruits and vegetables at affordable prices, and draw new food businesses into areas where they don't currently exist.

I also agree with the experts who say the government should require better labels on our food and more transparency in the industry so that people have a fuller understanding about what they are eating, and what it does to them. The US Food and Drug Administration is talking about revising the current label and requiring calorie counts to be posted more prominently. I also hope we will see more specific information about sugar content so we know just how much sugar is added to each serving of food. New York Times columnist Mark Bittman has another suggestion I like: put a traffic light logo on the label. A green light would be for food you can eat all the time, a cautionary yellow light would describe foods you should eat only once in a while, and a red light would warn about food that should be avoided altogether.

We also need to push our political leaders to get involved in refocusing the food industry. "We can't all go back to hunting or trapping or growing our own food," acknowledges Robert l.u.s.tig. Instead, "we need a new food system, one that works for the populace, one that doesn't overfeed them, one that doesn't cause significant chronic disease, and one that actually protects the environment. How is that going to happen when the only thing the food industry is interested in is making money?"

The answer is that government has to pressure food businesses, and for that to happen, Americans need to pressure their government. It's not a matter of what's in the government's best interest, it's what's in the best interest of the people.

I think that legal action against the food industry is one of the ways we can bring about broader changes. As more conversation about the causes of obesity and disease takes place, and Americans become more educated about the food system, this is beginning to happen. Some of the same lawyers who went after the tobacco industry decades ago are now going after Big Food.

"Fat and food have become the new tobacco," says John Banzhaf, one of the first attorneys to take legal action against smoking in the mid-1960s. Banzhaf is a public interest law professor at George Was.h.i.+ngton University and founder of Action on Smoking and Health. "Those legal actions against smoking had a lot to do with changing the mind of the public. In the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, even early nineties, most people blamed smoking solely on the smoker. It was his fault, it was his bad choice, it was his lack of responsibility."

Fat and food have become the new tobacco.

-John Banzhaf To me, that sounds very much like the way we have looked at obesity.

Initially, n.o.body thought to lay blame for smoking on the tobacco industry. That began to s.h.i.+ft, Banzhaf said, "as the revelations came out about how they promoted addiction, about how they lied, how they were underhanded. I think people began seeing that while personal responsibility plays a role, and people shouldn't smoke, at least part of the responsibility lay with those who were promoting it."

Again, I see a parallel with obesity and the aggressive marketing of fast foods. Still another similarity is that anti-smoking measures began to take hold when we discovered how adversely nonsmokers were affected by secondhand smoke. Likewise, as we recognize how the costs of too much weight affect us all, in higher taxes and inflated health insurance premiums, for example-we also recognize that everyone has a stake in dealing with the problem.

By mid-2012, twenty-five lawsuits had been filed against companies like ConAgra Foods, General Mills, and PepsiCo contending that they are mislabeling their products and thus misleading consumers.5 These high-profile cases have forced companies to change, especially companies that value their public image.

"They are much more worried that this is going to hurt them than tobacco companies ever were," Banzhaf says. "Tobacco companies already wear a very, very black hat. The food companies are reacting to the fact that we are beginning to place a black hat on them."

While the tobacco industry couldn't make a less hazardous cigarette, the food industry has a wider range of possible responses. "When you sue the fast food companies they can do things. They are doing things," Banzhaf says. "They are lowering the calorie count in some of their foods. They have introduced more nutritious entrees. They have provided increased disclosure of fats."

Walmart is one of the leaders here, reducing the salt and fat in some of the food they sell. "They're the big gorilla, the single biggest grocery seller in the world," said Zeke Emanuel. "Their decision will first and foremost shape their private label, but after that it will also affect a lot of the other products they sell. And a lot of manufacturers are going to take the products that they're selling at Walmart and distribute them more widely. So I'm strongly antic.i.p.ating a very big effect throughout the manufactured-food industry."

Still, I wouldn't expect the food industry to voluntarily make all the changes we need. The lawyers are still likely to have a role. And legal action will eventually lead to new statutes and regulations. "We will litigate until they legislate," says Banzhaf. "In our country there have been quite a number of movements, including the civil rights movement, which started with litigation, because there was very little public support for significant change. The only way to begin the change, to kick down the door, to arouse public attention, and then get legislative attention was through lawsuits."

Here it might be helpful to identify some of the new statutes and regulations which have already been sparked by the fat law suits. For example, New York City and then California required the disclosure of calories in foods at many chain restaurants, including fast food ones, and this requirement will apply nationwide in 2014 as a result of the Obamacare statute. More than two dozen jurisdictions now have a tax on or aimed at sugary soft drinks. Many states followed the example triggered by litigation in New York City and are restricting what foods can be sold and/or even brought into schools. Some jurisdictions are prohibiting establis.h.i.+ng fast food outlets within x number of yards of schools. And, of course, New York City has banned trans fats in foods and limited the sale of sugary soft drinks in movies and many other venues to only sixteen ounces.

I say it's time to declare war on obesity. I know it is not going to be easy to win, as Nancy Snyderman explains. "Never before has the human race been threatened by a profound overabundance of food," she says. "Cheap, affordable, toxic food that coincides with a loss of American sidewalks, the raping of public schools and taking away gym cla.s.ses, and a technological environment that invites people to do more by doing less. It's the perfect storm of societal issues that I think will doom the next generation if we allow it."

Never before has the human race been threatened by a profound overabundance of food.

-Nancy Snyderman We can't allow it. The problem threatens our health, our wealth, and our national security, and I'm convinced that together we can make the commitment to solve it. It will take education, government regulations, legal action, and commitment at every level of society, but tobacco showed us how much is possible. At one time, half of all American adults smoked; now fewer than 18 percent of them do. Turning that around took a combination of things.

"It wasn't just doctors talking to patients, it wasn't just getting rid of the advertising, it wasn't just raising the prices, and it wasn't just changing social att.i.tudes and driving smokers off campuses," says Zeke Emanuel. It was all of that and more.

So it has to be with food, he says. "We have to get smaller plates, we have to get better labeling, we have to get the price differential reduced so that the healthy thing is not the more expensive thing. All of these things are going to be important in getting our arms around the obesity epidemic."

TEN WAYS TO CHANGE OUR APPROACH TO WEIGHT.

*Start talking honestly about what needs to change. Hold constructive and public conversations about weight, body image, and how we produce, distribute, market, and eat food in America. Put the word fat back into our vocabulary and start using other blunt and forceful language. It's not enough to say "eat more fruits and vegetables." We also need to say "here are the foods that are killing us."

*Publicize the costs of obesity. The idea is not to stigmatize plus-size Americans, but to allow government officials and employers to break out their calculators and see whether programs to prevent or reverse obesity are worth the investment.

*Insist that our leaders lead. People with influence and authority at every level-in federal, state, and local government, in the workplace, in the health care system, and in the schools-should help promote the broad changes that will get us on a healthier path.

*Establish a federal obesity commission. I'd like to see smart recommendations, based on science, coming from the top about how to build healthier communities, incorporate incentives for weight loss into our health care system, make healthier foods more affordable, promote behavior change, and much more.

*Fund more scientific research. Losing and regaining weight involves complicated biology, and we need to learn more about that. We also need to understand whether food really can become addictive and what messages will get people to act.

*Overhaul the food climate in this country. There are a million public policy opportunities to make a difference. For starters, we should change the crops we subsidize, eliminate food deserts, revise the food label, and levy taxes on soda and other unhealthy food.

*Educate the public at every opportunity. Our health care professionals should talk about weight with their patients, our markets should install touch screens to provide more information about what's in the food they sell, and people who have succeeded should share their secrets with those who have not.

*Make our kids the first priority. There is lots more we can do to improve the quality of school lunches, teach kids more about food, and get them moving. Teachers should talk to parents about their kids' weight. And there is no excuse for selling sugary drinks and snacks in school vending machines.

*Forge a healthful vision in small towns and big cities. Let's make communities that work-with sidewalks, bike paths, easy-to-access and safe recreational activities, farmers' markets, and stores that have an incentive to sell fresh and healthy food.

*Celebrate a healthy thin in the media. Enough with the ultraskinny models. Let's show photographs of what real and healthy bodies look like.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL.

MY STORY, WITH DR. DAVID KATZ, LISA POWELL,.

DR. EMILY SENAY, DR. DAVID LUDWIG,.

DR. MARGO MAINE, DR. NANCY SNYDERMAN,.

MAGGIE MURPHY, SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND,.

CHEF LORENA GARCIA.

Let's go back into our homes now and talk about what else we have to do to get our children on the right path and keep them there. Nothing is more important to me, because I am pa.s.sionate about preventing my daughters from struggling with food the way Diane and I have. It just takes up too much brain s.p.a.ce, and it's too risky for their health.

I'll keep arguing for creating an environment that promotes a healthy thin for our kids. As I've said, schools, businesses, health care providers, and government can and should do a lot more.

But we can't hand off all the responsibility. We have to fight back together against a food industry that targets kids with billions of dollars in marketing, a media industry that tries to impose its own notions of healthy bodies on the rest of us, and a diet industry that says weight loss is easy if you just buy this or that product.

Teaching our children how to resist all that has to begin at home. That's where we can control the conversation.

We've got to take food back. We need to be in charge, to take owners.h.i.+p over what we buy and what we cook, and make it a priority, because it is going into our children's bodies and we have to make it healthy for them. As parents, we have an obligation to provide a firm grounding in smart eating so that when we send our kids into the world, they are as prepared as possible for the a.s.sault they will face. That's what it takes if they are not to become that generation of overweight and obese kids whose life span is shorter than that of their parents.

So how do we get our kids to eat well and to develop a healthy body image? What's the right way to talk about this with them? What do we say? What do we not say?

Talking about weight with your children is like threading your way through a minefield. Too much, and you worry that your child loses self-esteem or latches on to disordered eating. Too little, and you risk a child whose weight makes her a target of bullying and sets her up for a lifetime of health problems.

I turned again to the experts for their thoughts and guidance.

Everyone agrees on two things: good eating habits matter, and parents need to model good behavior. "We use the term junk food as if it's an innocuous thing," says Dr. David Katz, "but it is the construction material for the body and the brain of that growing child of yours. We would not countenance building a house out of junk. We would not sanction driving a car built out of junk, and yet we look around every day at children being built out of junk and everybody's okay with it. There's something profoundly wrong with that."

We use the term junk food as if it's an innocuous thing, but it is the construction material for the body and the brain of that growing child of yours.

-David Katz Changing that begins with parents, says Canyon Ranch's Lisa Powell. Their role "is to choose and prepare a healthy menu, and to model healthy eating behavior that's neither restrictive nor overeating."

Lisa gets frustrated by parents who bring their children in to see her and say, essentially, "Fix my kid" without looking at their own eating patterns. "Sometimes I want to shake them and say, 'You brought this food into the house!' That's the mother and father's responsibility: to decide what is going to be available in the house and how meals are going to be structured."

Dr. Emily Senay agrees. "Take them to the store, shop in the vegetable aisle, let them help you prepare food, get them involved in the process. You can't stop them from eating junk food outside the home, but if you give them information and continue to model healthy eating behavior at home, eventually kids will eat more like their parents."

Take them to the store, shop in the vegetable aisle, let them help you prepare food, get them involved in the process.-Dr. Emily Senay It has to be a family affair. I think Jim and I are doing a pretty good job exposing our girls to healthy eating. We are certainly trying to shape their att.i.tudes toward food and expand the horizons of their taste buds by training them to enjoy fruits and vegetables.

The girls are more aware of good and bad food than I ever was. We discuss it a lot in our household, and they generally lead the discussion. I tend to hang back, because I don't want to add to the pressure already imposed on them from my job and my issues with body image. I'm sure they think that is just as well-teenage girls don't need to hear their mother tell them how to eat every second of the day!

But they do need guidance, and I am grateful that Jim takes an active part in these discussions and does a lot of our grocery shopping. He'll buy organic peanut b.u.t.ter for Amelia because she runs track, and we give the girls a steak once a week because they are still developing and need protein and iron. Jim and I don't eat red meat so we'll have a different meal, but that's part of the conversation, too. And we get tons of broccoli rabe and Brussels sprouts, which all of us share.

When I was their age, I was like a runaway beer truck around food. One of my issues growing up was that I wanted to eat American food, and I wonder if that made me feel like I was missing out on something. In my household now, we have an all-American diet, but it's a healthy one. And I don't think my children feel the kind of lack that I did.

I don't think they feel denied. Ours is not a "Food n.a.z.i's" household, but we do shop carefully and we don't buy food that we don't want them to eat. We don't keep commercial cupcakes or sugary cereal around, but we do have granola without a lot of extra sugar, we have almonds, we have whole-wheat crackers. We even have windmill cookies, which have a certain amount of fat in them, but they're just not over the top. We don't buy potato chips and dip, but we do eat baked corn and whole-grain chips, and we enjoy salsa with them. We have all sorts of juices, but none of them are the processed sugar-filled ones in boxes. They don't have added sugar and they are organic.

One place we are strict is with soda. There is absolutely none of it in my house. None. As far as I'm concerned, if you wipe all soda off the face of the earth, this would be a better place. I don't see any reason why anyone should serve soda to their kids. It's like letting them drink candy. It's nothing more than liquid sugar, and as we've seen, sugar is poison.

Guess what I get out of that att.i.tude? One kid who never drinks soda, and one who always orders it at the restaurant. I can live with that, for now. It shows that parents can't influence all of their kids' behavior (as if we didn't know that), but without soda in our home, I know they are drinking a lot less of it.

Two studies back up my strong feelings here. In a Boston study, 224 overweight or obese high school students were given either the sugary beverages they usually drank or sugar-free drinks, including bottled water.1 That was the only difference between them; they got no nutritional advice, and they did not change their exercise habits. After a year, the kids in the sugar-free group weighed an average of four pounds less than the soda drinkers.

"I know of no other single food product whose elimination can produce this degree of weight change," said Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the study.

Similar results came in from a study in the Netherlands that involved more than 650 children, ages four through twelve. During their morning break at school, some kept drinking their usual sweet beverage and others were given sugar-free drinks instead. Eighteen months later, the children drinking the sugary drink weighed an average of two pounds more.2 Even with our crazy schedules, Jim and I try to have a sit-down family dinner with the girls at least a few times a week. It's not always easy to do, especially since I really want the meals to be home cooked as often as possible, but the research I've examined is too strong to ignore: eating dinner together is a good tool for helping kids avoid obesity and eating disorders.3 Family dinners don't happen often enough in many homes, says Margo Maine. "Sometimes when a family comes into my office and I ask them about family mealtime, they say, 'We don't eat together' or 'The last time we ate together was the last holiday.'" That's especially troubling given the research that's out there to suggest that kids whose families ate dinner together three to four times a week may be more resilient against substance abuse.

"When you're not sitting down, parents aren't really feeding their kids. Everybody has to fend for themselves," says Margo. In that situation kids aren't likely to get a well-balanced meal, especially if they come home late after a game or another activity. "They're just going to eat something high in fat and sugar. That's what we're drawn to when we're really, really hungry."

Dr. Nancy Snyderman says it is not only a matter of what we eat, but how we eat it. "All of those subtle things about how we learn to eat-manners, conversation, portion control, cooking together-those things have been lost in our generation because we no longer sit down and have dinner," she says. "Even if you do drive through and pick up the food, please take it home and put it on a plate. You eat slower, you eat better, and you're more cognizant about what you put in your mouth."

Even if you do drive through and pick up the food, please take it home and put it on a plate. You eat slower, you eat better, and you're more cognizant about what you put in your mouth.

-Nancy Snyderman But I want to see families cooking together again, instead of relying mostly on takeout and prepared foods. That's the only way to have personal quality control. Our kids ought to see us cook and help us cook, because we all learn so much when we buy food, handle food, and cook food together. That whole transaction has been lost for many families. Kids should learn how much oil goes into a recipe, and what good healthy ingredients are.

That's the idea behind Big Chef, Little Chef, a program created by chef Lorena Garcia. I'm a big fan because it gets parents and kids together to learn how to cook healthy foods and take back control over what they eat. "They end up loving being in the kitchen," says Lorena.

I know it saves time to let someone else do the cooking, and it's hard to make different choices with both parents working. But as Dr. Senay says, it can be done. "You've got to think carefully, you've got to plan, and you've got to continually push out the toxic stuff." I just don't think we should be pa.s.sing on responsibility for what goes into our kids' bodies to someone else. To someone who doesn't care. To someone who will add tons of b.u.t.ter and fat and salt and sugar to a dish to make it taste good so that you'll buy it.

Maggie Murphy, who edits Parade magazine and Dash, a food magazine, agrees with us. She is on a campaign to get more kids and parents making meals together, and her magazines provide simple and healthy recipes to help. "I think there's some connection between childhood obesity and the fact that people have become very disconnected from cooking," she says. "My mother was too busy working to teach me to cook, and I think our generation has lost something. We'd have more family dinners if we could simplify cooking so we could fit it into our busy, busy lives."

If someone as busy as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand can do her own food shopping and find ways to interest her two young boys in nutrition, I don't think the rest of us have a good excuse not to do the same.

The senator talks a lot to them about what their bodies need to grow. "When I ask them what they want to drink, I always say, 'Well, milk helps you grow, would you like some milk?' Henry always says, 'Yes, Mommy, I'd like milk because it helps me grow.'"

The senator also gets four-year-old Henry to see how many colors he can put on his plate, giving him blueberries, red and green apples, and other colorful produce. "It really helps the kids understand that the more colors they have on their plate, the more vitamins and minerals they have on their plate."

Senator Gillibrand also invented a point system that has helped her older son, Theo, understand the quality of different food choices. "We'd rate foods from zero to ten based on their quality. So candy would be a zero, and chicken broth and broccoli would be a ten," she explains. "When he would ask me for foods that had very little nutritional value, I would often tell him, 'Well, you can have those potato chips, if you pick something that's a ten to eat before you eat the chips.'"

I think she's on the right track, because both her kids adore fruits and veggies.