More Philadelphia Kids Able to Ignore That “No Fatties” Sign

Some good news out of Philadelphia schools: Our students are getting thinner—or, at least, less fat. [Be Well Philly] A study in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease says that obesity declined among students over four years, from 21.5 percent of kids to 20.9 percent; “severely” obese kids dropped from 8.5 percent of the student population to 7.9 percent. While those might seem like modest declines, the city’s health and fitness advocates celebrated the reversal of decades-long trends in which it appeared we were fattening up our children like turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner. How’d we do that? The Inquirer suggests that City Hall’s moves to ban trans fats and mandate nutritional labeling on restaurant menus have had an effect—and that even Mayor Nutter’s failed efforts to pass a soda tax may have helped by keeping health issues in the public eye. [Education Week]