and therefore how important it is to move quickly to advance an agenda with policy makers.

Fonseca followed up on Smith’s points by noting that it is difficult to achieve health initiatives for children in all communities through state efforts alone. His perspective suggests that obesity prevention might be more successful in a state if the federal government instituted national mandates, such as nutritional updates to the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, improvements to the Food Stamp and WIC Programs, and better food and menu labels. He added that this approach might also be a more cost-effective way of reducing obesity than implementing interventions that require local financial or human resources. For example, mandating that schools offer nonfat or 1 percent milk instead of 2 percent milk would shave roughly 20 calories off of every carton of milk children drink at no cost to schools.