 When we hear about childhood obesity, a few main factors get the majority of our attention: quality and quantity of food eaten, levels of physical activity obtained and total screen time consumed, to name a few. While these factors undoubtedly influence the development of childhood obesity, there are other variables that might also play a role. If we are thinking about how the quality and quantity of food a child consumes might lead to obesity, we should also consider how parents affect how a child approaches food. Evidence suggests that there is an association between restrictive feeding practices by parents and both overeating and weight gain in children.
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 Previous literature has shown varying associations between food establishments and childhood obesity, so we sought to examine these associations in a very large sample of nearly 50,000 pediatric patients ages 4-18 years. The results were recently published in the journal Childhood Obesity. Our aim was to determine if the distance from a patient’s home to six types of food establishments was associated with their body mass index (BMI) or weight status.
 Recently, I’ve had the great fortune to visit Greenland. As luck would have it, a friend of mine is living there to studying fisheries as a Fulbright Scholar. When I got the invitation, I was very excited to see the mountains and fjords and to learn more about the Inuit, as well as the interesting political relationship between Greenland and its colonial ruler, Denmark. I was a bit less excited about the food.
 With the recent news that the FDA has demanded that trans fats –fats found in margarine, and in many processed foods as partially hydrogenated oil -- be removed from the US market within 3 years, I was afraid that my mother had been correct in telling me to limit my fat intake while I was growing up. As a teenager growing up in the 1970s, she was coming of age when the first set of dietary guidelines called for Americans to limit how much fat they ate. This advice stuck with her through adulthood when she eventually became a mother and did her best to raise healthy kids.
 In 2014, Mexicans purchased 137 liters of soda per person – that’s more than 1 liter every 3 days. (Only three countries consume more soda per capita -- Argentina, the United States, and Chile). In 2012, sugary drinks accounted for an astounding 17% of total daily calories consumed among Mexican children and 19% among Mexican adults. Mexico also has the highest overweight and obesity rates in the world, coming in at 72% of its citizens as either overweight or obese, just above the US. In response, Mexico has aggressively implemented policies to address excessive sugary drink consumption and overweight/obesity. In January 2014, Mexican lawmakers implemented a tax of 1 peso (around 7 cents) per liter (about a 10% tax) on any non-dairy, non-alcohol drink with added sugar. Taxes like these are often referred to as “soda taxes” but usually cover more than just soda, as the Mexican tax does. They also passed a companion 8% tax on unhealthy snack food, covering “salty and other snacks, confectionery products, chocolate and products derived from cacao, puddings and flans, candy, peanut butter and hazelnut butter, ice cream, and popsicles.”
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