Weighing Change: Addressing Child Obesity Reforms in the United States

The goal of this thesis is to establish the causes of child obesity in order to pinpoint the faults and gaps of both the federal government’s and mainstream food movement’s proposals to manage child obesity in an effort to illuminate sectors for policy reform. The complicated causal mechanism that maps the recent rise in the child obesity rate necessitates a multilateral response that can address the larger structural origins of child obesity woven by the actors in the food market. Both the federal government and the mainstream food movement prescribe unilateral policy platforms that fail address both supply- and demand-sides of the child obesity causal mechanism. Ultimately, this thesis deconstructs the proposals of these movements in order to illuminate arenas for policy developments to improve health outcomes.