Kaiser Permanente's Dr. Pat Cantrell's Formula for Getting Kids Healthy

Hi, I'm Dr. Pat Cantrell and I'm a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego. And today, I'd like to talk to you about childhood obesity and adult obesity. As a pediatrician, I see a lot of kids that have trouble with their weight. 31.7 percent of kids are overweight or obese. And I have some tips for kids and adults to help you get healthy, and I have an easy way to do it. 5, 2, 1, 0. What does that stand for? 5 stands for, eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. 2 stands for no more than 2 hours of screen time every day. 1 stands for 1 hour of exercise every day. And 0 stands for 0 sugary, sweetened drinks like sodas. Well, some people think, Dr. Pat, that doesn't sound too difficult. It's not as easy as you think. A lot of Americans are not able to follow those rules. So let me see if I can help you follow those rules. For the 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day the important thing to remember for kids is a serving size is actually not an entire fruit or an entire vegetable. A 4-year-old or a 5-year-old has a smaller portion size. A good way to remember a portion size would be look at about the back of their hand or the palm of their hand. That's the normal portion size for a child. And it increases as they get bigger. So it's a good way to figure out how much each serving size should be of a fruit or a vegetable. The second thing that will help get five servings of fruits and vegetables in your day would be to eat a balanced plate. That plate can be divided into four sections. Half of the plate should be fruits and vegetables and the other half should be proteins and grains. If you can do that at lunchtime and at dinnertime and then maybe throw some fruit in with breakfast, you'll be at your five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. So one good example would be, you can have a little bit of chicken at dinner with some rice, some broccoli and some strawberries. You've got two right there. The second healthy tip is no more than 2 hours of screen time a day. Screen time includes time on the computer playing video games, watching television. We know that kids between the ages of 8 and 18 have 7 and a half hours of media time a day. That includes texting and the phone and that's way too much. You're not getting active. You're just being sedentary. And we recommend only 2 hours a day. That leads me to my next tip. We want you to get one hour of exercise every day. That doesn't have to be all at the same time. You can do 20 minutes at PE in school. Walk with your family for 30 minutes after school. Go for a bike ride. Just so that it totals one hour a day. And our last tip of the day is, zero sodas and sugar-sweetened beverages. Sodas can contain as much sugar as a candy bar. This 2-liter bottle of soda contains 52 teaspoons of sugar. That's way too much. And I have kids that will drink this within a couple of days. So what do we recommend? Water and low-fat milk instead. So 5, 2, 1, 0. There you have it. You can do it. Come join me and get healthy.