The Secret Weapon Against Childhood Obesity - A Magazine

The Atlantic has a piece about the new magazine ChopChop.

From the piece...

Over the next few months, an idea took shape that matched my skills to my goals: I would give recipes to pediatricians to distribute during well-child visits. Kids would learn to cook and take some responsibility for their own health. They would have fun, bond with their parents or caregivers, and stop eating so much damn junk. They would achieve nutritional literacy. This could be my own "little red wagon" project.

I called Barry Zuckerman, chief of pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital. I knew Barry because when other hospital administrators seemed more worried about whether wheeling toys through hospital corridors violated arcane regulations, he wholeheartedly supported it. I knew that not only did Barry think outside the box, he barely knew there was a box. He loved the idea of ChopChop and pushed me to get more feedback from other doctors. Literally every single pediatrician said, "Bring it on!"

My son's pediatrician, Dan Slater at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, actually asked, "Can you get it to me in two weeks?" In spite of my excitement, I challenged him: Would he really have time to talk about cooking with a patient when he had only 30 minutes to cover an endless array of topics, among them seat belts, bike safety, oral hygiene, physical hygiene, physical activity (including the dictum to learn to swim), boundary setting and rules, sleep habits, school, growth and development, strangers, sport safety, safety at home, healthy friendships, and bullying?

His unequivocal response was yes. He told me he talked about healthy eating all day long with his patients. "But I have no tools. If you give me healthy recipes, then I'm not just talking about it; I'm giving my patients something they can really use."

It became obvious that there was a need for ChopChop, and that to get to doctors I needed to be a non-profit (I re-started Kid2Kid) and raise money. The first one into the money pool was Boston Medical Center, Barry's hospital, of course. When other hospitals heard that Barry was in, that got their competitive juices flowing, and they followed as well.