too cool for school

            It’s not just the United States that has to face the fact of childhood obesity. The News & Star paper from England reported:

“A generation of Cumbrian children is facing severe health problems with one in 10 starting school clinically obese.”

            This year they had 500 children start school that qualified as being obese.

            The frightening thing is that if this trend continues, rates will only increase by age, with little hope of the children “rebounding” from their weight problems. Most kids go through that chubby phase, as I know that I did- but that is losing baby weight, if you’d like to call it that, which is just about the time your body starts pumping out hormones so you are bound to gain some weight. However, things settle down and your body “evens” itself out. There is a major difference between putting on a few pounds, to being overweight, to being clinically obese. Taking your height and weight into consideration, you figure out your Body Mass Index (BMI) and if that calculates to thirty or more, you’re obese. The more a child is obese, the less likely it is that they will ever lose the weight and more likely it is to develop “type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, sleep apnea, and stroke,” says WebMD.com. Although these are long term problems, there are ones that kids will see a lot sooner, “there are also mental health consequences. There is more possibility of being bullied, affecting self esteem and achievements in school,” says News & Star.

            Simply put, the children are not eating properly. Remember the food pyramid? If you came from a school like mine, I’m sure you couldn’t forget considering we had to do our own diagrams almost every year until high school, and then one more time in health class by senior year. This is a great tool for teachers to have kids make up a daily food triangle of servings and portions you should have, and then next to it have them make an actual one of the things they eat in a day. Not surprisingly, most if not all the students’ work would be nothing like what it should be. It’d be wonderful to start these projects when students are young, while getting them into physical education classes where the fat kids aren’t always picked last and making well balanced meals and choices.

            In Cumbrian they have started the students and their families working with MEND (mind, exercise, nutrition, do it) which pushes them onto the right track of dropping bad eating and living habits. However, funding may be cut because enough families won’t join, but why not? Because the problem starts with not willing to admit that they need help. Kids aren’t to blame because for the most part they don’t know what they’re doing is wrong and hurtful to their bodies, but this is why schools need to integrate more “health conscious” classes.

            “Medics say the growing childhood obesity epidemic is one of the biggest problems facing the county, impacting not only on youngsters’ weight, but their mental health and achievements at school,” comments the News & Star.

            Children thrive much better in an environment where they feel safe and comforted. Surely this cannot happen when they’re out of breath walking from the bus to class, or struggling to write fast enough with their pudgy little fingers- or even worse, being humiliated by a bully. Teachers and families need to work together to get out youth back into shape!

News & Star

Primary Kids Obesity Shock

Feb. 25, 2008. Viewed Feb, 25, 2008.

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=797211

WebMD

Health and Diet: Obesity Overview

April 20, 2007. Viewed Feb. 25, 2008

http://www.webmd.com/diet/tc/obesity-overview

“Okay team, we want to fund our trip to Florida, well we’re going to need to have a fund raiser. And what do people like most? Well, that’d be good food, so let’s sell five pound tubs of cookie dough or something to do with pizza- who could resist that?!” I’m sure this, although somewhat dramatized, conversation sounds familiar to any one who has been apart of some type of extra curricular activity in school. Even coming from a well-off community, it seemed like there were always fund raisers going on, and all of them were dominated by food.

In Montgomery County, Washington they are examining this issue and trying to find alternatives for the students. The report done on the twenty-four elementary schools and six middle and high schools was to eventually help strengthen their policies on food and beverage marketing.

Kathy Lazor, director of food and nutrition for Montgomery schools, said, “that a new vending contract calls for contractors to replace images of corporate logos, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, with pictures of healthful foods or of people engaged in activities that boost fitness, such as biking and walking.”

Impressionable teens, even subconsciously will be influenced by the “healthiness” of what they’re seeing, instead of images of fatty candy bars and soda. They found that there were twenty-one vending machines in the high schools and although they offered mostly water, there was still pop and juices. The food was the typical candy, cookies, and chips. In my high school alone there were six vending machines, three of which were in the cafeteria. I know that they did offer water, granola bars, and powerade, but who wants to eat that when you can have a diet coke and pretzels? But that all seems very contrasting when they decided that pop would no longer be sold in the cafeteria lines, instead you would need to walk the additional twenty feet to the Coke machine to get your fix.

“School fund raisers at McDonald’s restaurants have teachers serving Big Macs and Quarter Pounders to their students,” and in at “least four elementary schools, in which teachers gave certificates to students who met reading goals, the certificates entitled students to a free personal-size pizza.”

Of course a student will be more enticed to do well when they have a pizza coming there way instead of an apple, but that shows that teachers are placing the importance on the wrong thing. They should be encouraging their students to read well because they need to, not just bribe them with a whole pizza- to themselves. To an elementary student, a gold star sticker and praise for their good work is more of a self-esteem boost than anything else would be. Don’t get me wrong, a bake sell of cookies every once in a while isn’t going to hurt anyone, and a night out at a restaurant where some of the profits go to the school is a great idea, but when these ideas turn into constant unhealthy Pepsi, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds pushes then its time to rethink what your saying to kids. Return to the good old car washes, or precut fruit cups, or even the selling of flowers for young lovers to show their affection.

Washington Post

“Study looks at schools’ Food Values”

By: Lori Aratani

Feb. 14, 2008. Viewed Feb. 16, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021301855.html

    As I have learned in my education classes, sometimes you need to educate or reach a parent before you can get to the child. The first and strongest influence a child will ever have is it’s parents (or guardians) so, from a young age that child is like a sponge, lapping up everything from what their parent says, what they do, and what they eat.

The Redding Pilot featured an article about the “Two Angry Moms” and how these women are trying to change school lunch. Basically they want EVERYONE in the community to heighten their awareness of what they consume. Some of the frightening facts they introduce are

“ 35% of American children are overweight or at risk; one in three children born in the year 2000 will become diabetic; one in four American children take prescription medication daily for chronic illness. There are soaring rates of asthma, ADHD, anxiety, autism, learning disabilities and depression among children.“

But are we taking the easy way out by blaming these facts purely on food? BBC news recently did an article that looked at if by chance childhood obesity was genetic. When doing a study with non-identical twins (because they’re genetically different but will have the same upbringing) they found that a bad food environment was less influential then the children’s genes.

Jane Wardle, the professor that lead the study said, “These results do not mean that a child with a high complement of susceptibility genes will inevitably become overweight, but that their genetic endowment gives them a stronger predisposition.”

If genes do have a small role in our weight, then it is even more important to watch what school kids eat.”Two Angry Mom’s” suggests we find new alternatives to the way that we view and use food now. For instance, food is used as a reward in many situations, like getting an answer right in class, but instead maybe a bonus point on the next test would be a better way to go. Also, in many schools there isn’t much time allotted for kids to eat lunch and return to class, causing them to stuff food in their mouth while still being able to get in dire social time.

“Look at the contract for food service providers. Schools do a RFP — request for proposals — every five years. Use the Freedom of Information Act to see what the proposal is asking of vendors. Many efforts to improve the foods served in school is being undermined by provisions of the contracts,” points out Amy Kalafa, who created the documentary. 

Kalafa makes a great point, because she is telling the community that they all need to step up if they want to see change. Busy parents may not have the time to see who supplies the food at their kids school, let alone make them a well balanced meal to bring for lunch- but if they spend the extra time now trying to change things they won’t have to watch their child go through the suffering of teasing, obesity, and perhaps diabetes. I think that many parents think of schools like they do of Disney World, that every thing is safe and going to get taken care of. We need to change this frame of mind and begin taking an active role in all parts of schools.

The BBC article points out that it’s not just the fact that kids are fatter now then they ever have been. Obesity at a young age could carry through to adulthood, and with that comes many frightening conditions like diabetes, risk factors for cancer, and other things like depression.

Tam Fry from the Child Growth Foundation says, “Even if someone has a gene which predisposes them to obesity, it doesn’t mean they will become obese if they work hard to eat healthily, and take more exercise to burn off those calories.”

If schools start changing what they offer for meals now, it will be taking a giant step in the right direction. A change needs to be made, otherwise there’s a good chance that our children will start having shorter life expectancies than we will.

The Redding Pilot

‘Two Angry Moms’ deals with school lunch food issues 

By Janis Gibson

Feb 11, 2008

http://www.acorn-online.com/news/publish/redding/28786.shtml

BBC News

Obesity ‘may be largely genetic

Feb 7, 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7230065.stm