Retailers, NGOs and Food and Beverage Industry Launch National Initiative to Help Redu...( Healthy Weight Commitment Foundatio...),Health

Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation Seeks to Encourage Behavior Change and Provide Tools to Help Consumers Achieve Energy Balance in the Marketplace, in the Workplace and in Schools

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An unprecedented coalition of more than 40 retailers, non-governmental organizations and food and beverage manufacturers today announced the launch of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a national, multi-year effort designed to help reduce obesity -- especially childhood obesity -- by 2015. The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation will promote ways to help people achieve a healthy weight through energy balance. It focuses on three critical areas -- the marketplace, the workplace and schools.

"The stakeholders involved in this commitment recognize that by working together we can make a real difference on the obesity issue in our country," said David Mackay, president and chief executive officer of Kellogg Company and chairman of the board of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation. "We are united in an unprecedented, collaborative and focused effort to help children and adults achieve better energy balance between calories in and calories out."

The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation will promote the concept of energy balance -- balancing calories consumed as part of a healthy diet with calories expended by physical activity -- to people in the places where they spend much of their time: to consumers in the marketplace, to employees through workplace programs and to children in schools.

Members of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation have already committed $20 million to this joint initiative to raise awareness about the importance of balancing a healthy diet with physical activity, particularly among children ages six to 11 years old and their parents and caregivers. This effort will include a soon-to-be
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