For years, child obesity has been an issue on many people's minds. Only recently has the child obesity epidemic been made known to the public. A new President has taken office and with that, First Lady Michelle Obama has made it a governmental concern Now, she is stepping in to help however she can with this.

President Obama encouraged this by signing a memorandum. What this has started up was a task force in which his wife would chair. What this task force would do would be to double all the efforts to help pave the way towards mending this childhood obesity problem that the United States faces.

It is said that one third of this generation is affected by childhood obesity. Most of those affected have a potential of living shorter lives than their parents. Pretty scary don't you think?

So, how do they plan on doing this? They hope to do a lot to bring about awareness and so much more along those terms. What they truly aim to do is get a number of people engaged to make a difference. Among those that they hope to engage, they are trying to especially get families as well as the community, both the private and the public parts of the community active in trying to beat childhood obesity.

It is said that one out of every five children who are overweight, at least one of them is considered obese. At least ten percent of all babies are considered obese. Since 1998 when this became an epidemic, the government has paid an enormous amount to medical costs for the weight balloon. It has doubled since the year of 1998. It went from seventy eight billion dollars to a hundred and forty seven billion dollars as of the year 2006.

So, what is being done for that? So far, a number of things have been done. For instance, for those companies selling sugared drinks, they are putting a tax on it. Schools have helped to ban junk food from vending machines and chocolate milk from the school cafeteria lunch and breakfast lines. From all of this has stemmed a nation wide campaign. This has been deemed as the Let's Move campaign to help encourage America to get off the couch and onto a life that is active. Even the Obama children are learning how to get moving.

Everyone is making the efforts to do something and President Obama's wife is encouraging all of you to get involved. If you have children, then she wants to make you aware that your children are at stake. They as a couple is tired of sitting around and watching our children slip away. If there is something that they can do to help, they will do it. They have started by this way, but the task force hopes to be aggressive in its thinking process to help at least put a slight decrease of childhood obesity so that we might have a healthier future for this next generation that is supposed to take our place when the time comes that we are no longer able to be here. If you have children, it might be wise to follow this as great things can come about this. It might be just what America needed.