Journal #3

Kendra Harms                                     Let’s Move                             October 9, 2014

Seeman, Neil. "Move If U Wanna: Obama And The Weight Loss Nudge." CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal 183.1 (2011): 152. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Oct. 2014.

            This article focuses on how American children are still getting fatter despite the Let’s Move campaign. The title of this article is, “Move If U Wanna: Obama And The Weight Loss Nudge.”  This article compares Let’s Move to a popular rap song, “Move If U Wanna” by the band Mims. “Let’s Move” is an evidence-based campaign.  However, “Move If U Wanna” is not.  “Move If U Wanna” was designed to sell CDs.  It does not force you to do anything, you only move if you want to.  America has been trying to fight obesity with evident-based campaigns for years, and it always fails.  What differentiates campaigns like “Move If U Wanna” from “Let’s Move” is their success is random, what works for one person to manage their weight doesn’t for another.  Secondly, young people only like to engage in activities they are interested in, like listening to music.  Neil Seeman suggests that if Michelle Obama wants to make a real difference, she should listen to her husbands trusted advisor Cass Sunstein who argues that “to change behavior the nudge needs to be individualized and attached to meaningful incentives.” 

            As noted in the first article I researched the “Let’s Move” campaign hopes to help cure childhood obesity in the United States by focusing on healthy eating habits being promoted by families, schools and communities.  However, Neil Seeman argues in this article that to change eating behaviors we need to reward individuals financially for honest attempts to manage their weight loss and also reward primary care providers financially for creating individualized weight management plans. Robin Schepper from my second research article argues that there are four barriers that make “Let’s Move” unsuccessful.  These four barriers are inspiration, access, programming and infrastructure.  Neil Seeman and Robin Schepper both agree that the “Let’s Move” campaign isn’t working but in different ways.  They both have different views on how to make it successful. 

            This article has affected my thinking process because now I have more sources that argue “Let’s Move” is unsuccessful.  Neil Seeman argued in this article that campaigns like “Let’s Move” are never successful and haven’t been for years.  This opened a new area of research for me.  I now want to explore similar campaigns to “Let’s Move” and find out their success rates.  I am coming to the realization that there is nothing different from “Let’s Move” than other campaigns I’ve heard about.  If “Let’s Move” really wants to cure obesity they have to come up with a more personalized plan.  I also found it interesting that Michelle Obama told children on Sesame Street that if they eat healthy foods they will grow up to be big and strong.  I don’t think curing childhood obesity is as easy as Michelle Obama is making it sound. If curing childhood obesity were as easy as eating healthy foods then it wouldn’t be this big of a problem. This article proves that there is a lot more to curing obesity than just focusing on healthy eating habits being promoted by families, schools, and communities.  This article really opened my mind to wanting to figure out how she thinks her campaign will cure obesity.  I want to figure out what makes “Let’s Move” different from other campaigns and how she came up with what she did for curing obesity and where she explains how these things will be enough to cure it. 

            There are many new questions that have come up in relation to this article.  How is “Let’s Move” different from other campaigns in the past?  How will focusing on healthy eating habits alone cure the obesity epidemic?  How did Michelle Obama come up with focusing on healthy eating habits alone being enough to fix this problem?  Are there any sources that think “Let’s Move” is successful?  What else could Michelle Obama do to make her campaign successful?  The main idea that I am reconsidering is that “Let’s Move” can even make a difference in childhood obesity.  The idea of “Let’s Move” that I am reconsidering is that focusing on healthy foods can cure obesity.  If it were that easy wouldn’t it have been done already?  This article brings an important light of research to my mind.  I really want to figure out how healthy eating habits cures obesity.  I will go about finding answers by doing research on the book that lists every aspect of her movement and explains in detail how it works.