Katie Couric Takes on the Obesity Epidemic

By Jane Francisco

Ask Katie Couric about the best advice she's ever received, and she'll reply, without hesitation: "Don't let the turkeys get you down." The 5' 4" dynamo may not seem like a woman who needs help in the confidence department (after all, this is a woman who has undergone a colonoscopy on live TV). But Couric, now the global news anchor at Yahoo, admits she's found it hard to shake off the criticism that's come her way. "As someone who's kind of a pleaser," she says, "I've had to learn to be OK with the fact that not everyone is going to like me and that I have to just forge ahead."

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Right now, Couric is doing just that, embracing a message that may be hard for everyone to hear: The food we're eating may be undermining our health - and stealing years from our lives. This very issue inspired the just-released documentary Fed Up, a film Couric coproduced about the childhood-obesity crisis in the U.S.

Hear from Katie in her own words...

Kick-Starting the Project

As the anchor of CBS Evening News, I was constantly referencing new studies about childhood obesity. The problem seemed to be getting worse and worse even though it was getting more and more attention. I saw the impact it was having on so many aspects of American life - from our military readiness to health-care costs - and I thought, How can we be leaving this legacy to our children? So when I interviewed Stephanie Soechtig about Tapped, her 2009 documentary about the bottled-water industry, I asked, "Would you ever consider taking a comprehensive look at childhood obesity in our country?" I thought it would give people an opportunity to enact real change. Then we brought Laurie David on board. She wrote The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect With Your Kids, One Meal at a Time, so I knew this was a subject she cared about.

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Nutrition: Now and Then

I was with friends at breakfast recently and asked, "When you were a kid and had orange juice for breakfast, do you remember the size of the glass?" The glasses were little, which is interesting to me, because orange juice isn't bad - but if you drink a huge glass of it…. [Ten ounces of OJ is 146 calories.]

Something has happened in the past 30 years. When I was a child, a typical breakfast would be Cheerios or Shredded Wheat (my mom didn't allow us to have sugared cereals), a small glass of orange juice and some fruit. Or she'd make me an egg and toast. For dinner, I'd have chicken and maybe a bit of potato, a serving of peas and a salad. I didn't eat much processed food, and my mom didn't believe in eating between meals.

Now we live in a culture where food is ubiquitous, and we're eating 24/7. Buy gas, there's food; buy electronics, there's food; go to the drugstore, and there's candy where you pay for your shampoo.

Hide and Sweet

I'd like people to take a look at food labels to see the sugar content in some of the things they're eating. The American Heart Association says that if you're a woman, you can have up to six teaspoons of added sugar a day - and if you're a man, it's nine teaspoons. If you drink a beverage that has 32 grams of sugar, that's eight teaspoons right there! Something else to keep in mind: Of the 600,000 products in the average grocery store, 80% have added sugar, particularly foods touted as being "low-fat." Low-fat ranch dressing, for example, can have half the fat but double the sugar. When I found that out, I was like, Whoa!

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Talk Food With Your Kids

Here are some frightening statistics from the film: In 1980 there were zero cases of type 2 diabetes in adolescents - now, children are being diagnosed with it in staggering numbers. Members of this generation are expected to have shorter life spans than their parents!

It's such a paradox: You want to tell kids about being healthy, but not make them feel like you're being critical or advocating a certain body type. You don't want to hit that hot-button issue and have your daughter say, "Are you saying I'm fat?" Parents shy away because they don't want to hurt their children's feelings, but it should be part of your obligation as a parent to educate your kids about food, just as you would about other things that could be harmful, like drugs. Focus on the importance of making healthy choices - don't talk about being thin or being heavy. Say, "I want you to be as healthy as you possibly can. Food is fuel, and the better the fuel, the better your body will work." And by the way, you can be thin on the outside and fat on the inside. So you can tell them, "This isn't about your size. It's about what you're putting in your body. There are a lot of thin kids who have medical problems because of food choices."

Hopefully kids can be activists in this department. If they hear that they're expected to have shorter life spans than their parents, maybe they'll say, "We're going to take back our kitchen," or "We're going to take back our school cafeterias."

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