Irie Mazas, 7, with her mother, Miriam Bautista, center, and brother, Carlos Mazas, during a BodyWorks class at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. & Vermont Farmers Market in Los Angeles.“How much?” Bautista asked the stall vendor in Spanish. Before the strawberries made it into a shopping bag, Irie was chomping on one, juice dripping onto her shirt.A few months ago, Bautista worried she’d never get her daughter to eat healthy food.
Miriam Bautista goes shopping for fruits and vegetables in Los Angeles. Bautista was diagnosed with gestational diabetes when she was pregnant with her son, Carlos, which led her to search for healthy solutions for her whole family. After several attempts to make Irie eat vegetables ended in tantrums, Bautista sought help from the girl’s pediatrician. She referred them to a seven-week obesity prevention program called BodyWorks. Run by CHLA and AltaMed, an outpatient care provider, BodyWorks uses games, exercise, videos and healthy snacks to steer kids toward a better path.
On a recent checkup six weeks into the BodyWorks program, Irie was no longer overweight, Bautista said.Irie is happy too. She recounted with pride how she eats one helping of fruit and one of vegetables at every meal. Broccoli, which she first thought “tasted weird,” is now her favorite vegetable, she said.
“We’re trying to tell them it’s in the best interest of your child and of your pregnancy,” she said. “But there’s definitely a lot of fear out there.” “For this population, just having enough to eat is what they’re most worried about,” said Victor Solano, a health educator at a clinic in San Fernando. “So they focus on quantity of the food, not so much quality.”
“It was hard,” Sebastian said. But Gustavo’s diagnosis gave her the strength to persevere. “I felt guilty and I thought, ‘No, this has to change.’”
The environment of LA is certainly providing too much stress and anxiety to young minds.
A lot of fat kids in Los Angeles
Teach them low carb, healthy fat lifestyle early on and it will fix itself.
But the Mexican food is so good. worthit
Maybe the parents parents parents (UNDERSTAND) should change their eating habits....3/4 yr,old. CHILDREN DON'T BUY THEIR OWN FOOD
In the United States, the prevalence of obesity among school-aged children (6 to 11 years) and adolescents (12 to 19 years) continues to increase dramatically.