What does healthy look like?

Tips for healthy kids:

1) Provide them with at least five servings of vegetables and fruit a day.
What does that look like? a small apple, half of a banana, a handful of baby carrots, one celery stalk cut up and a stalk of steamed broccoli.

2) No sugary drinks: offer water once an hour, and 100% juice (1 serving/day), and or low fat milk.

3) Encourage children to be active. Buy them consumable equipment like balls, hula hoops, beanbags etc. Children will choose to be active when they have equipment to play with.

4) Set an example, by eating and drinking healthy options as well as by staying physically fit yourself.

New Study: Cutting Fat & Sugar in Schools

by Andrea Bossenmeyer

The new issue of The Journal of Pediatrics, published a Temple University study showing the true power schools do have in reducing rates of obesity.

The researchers chose to examine schools impact in reducing obesity, factoring in that kids eat 1-2 meals at school per day. They went into 10 schools and revamped their menus. Soda was replaced with water, fruit juice and low-fat milk; snacks were capped at 7 grams of total fat and 2 grams of saturated fat; and candy was eliminated. Additional factors besides nutrition revamp, was nutrition education and parental involvement.

The research study was successful in reducing the amount of new cases of obesity by half; however was unsuccessful in reducing the amount of children who were already obese.

To read more : Philadelphia Study

TV Turnoff week April 21st-27th

"TV Turnoff week promotes the idea that limiting screen time and boosting physical activity can lead to healthier living, sponsored in part by the Center for Screen Time Awareness (CSTA) and We Can!, a science-based national education program from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) makes the following recommendations for physical activity and tv watching time:

• Limit TV viewing and video game playing to two hours a day
• Boys should take a least 11,000 steps daily
• Girls should take at least 13,000 steps a day

"Children not meeting the physical activity or exceeding the screen time recommendations were 3-4 times more likely to be overweight than those complying with both recommendations," Laurson says in a news release. Laurson is from an Iowa State Research Study.

There is continuous researching documenting links between the more screen time a child has, the more likely they are to be obese and not reaching daily exercise recommendations. Childhood obesity is linked to type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and asthma. All serious threats to a child's quality of life & lifespan.

To read more about turn off tv week
or incentives...

A child's view of "healthy diet"

By Andrea Bossenmeyer

A new report asked children what a healthy diet is, and they responded "One in which you do not gain weight." Rather than a diet that gives you all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals you need to grow and develop.

They also interviewed children as young as four. The research indicates that children can be strongly prejudiced against overweight people. Children had little sympathy for people who are overweight. Their perception was that these people are lazy and responsible for their condition.

The kids said that weight and size was how they determined a healthy person. They determined that the unhealthy effects of eating bad shows only externally (fat, skin issues, bad teeth), the children didn't consider internal consequences.

The report also found that while children were well able to recognize healthy foods from unhealthy foods, when they were given the option of a nutritious lunch or a meal with a high sugar content, they tended to opt for the unhealthier option.

To read more about the The Voice of Young People Report

Related Blogs on nutrition and Overweight
What consists of an appropriate snack?
Nutrition training changes eating habits of preschoolers.

From the Farm to the School Lunchroom

The increased cost of fuel is affecting the costs of everything. Many school districts are having to cut items from the menu because they don't fit into the budget any longer!

One school district in Bainbridge, Washington is trying to pass a bill that allows the school districts to favor contracts from local farmers to get local foods on lunchrooms menus. Groups of parents hope the measure will rejuvenate interest in adding nutritious, naturally grown foods to the district’s menus.

Dr. Cowan, a physician and parent of students in the district said, "There is a growing body of science that shows that foods shed nutrients over long trips, while fossil fuels are burned shipping the foods from one state to another. Meanwhile, nutritionists are more and more abandoning vitamins pills and food pyramids in favor of fresh, lightly processed produce."

Meanwhile, Cowan said, local farms would benefit from new demand, which could in turn help preserve open space and aquifers. He hopes the district can take advantage of the new legislation, even if it only adds an incremental amount of fresh produce.

Overall I think its an innovative idea in trying to feed children nutritious options while boosting the local economy and agriculture all the while being environmentally friendly! To read more about their plan, click here.

Resources for Safe Routes to School

Creating safe routes for children to travel on to get to school is catching on as more school districts are realizing the benefits of an active commute. The Safe Routes to School program was created as a resource for schools and parents who want to consider activating a walking-to-school program. The Safe Routes to School website provides lots of information on the benefits of walking to and from school including information on Route planning and Interactive mapping.

National School Breakfast Week

Secretary of Agriculture Charles M. Kuperus and U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Regional Administrator Patricia Dombroski in celebration of a National School Breakfast Week shared a breakfast of cereal, low fat milk, juice and yogurt Monday morning with fourth graders from Anthony V. Ceres Elementary School.

Dombroski, who ate bananas and yogurt with the children, said research shows eating breakfast helps children to be ready to learn.

"Breakfast can be the single most important meal of the day for children, helping them to perform better at school," Kuperus said. "Our Department of Agriculture nutrition programs can lay the groundwork for these students to live healthier lives as adults."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture administers the School Breakfast Program at the federal level, providing cash subsidies and donated commodities for each meal served. The New Jersey Department of Agriculture operates the program in the state. The program, established in 1966, provides nutritionally balanced breakfasts in public and nonprofit private school and residential child-care institutions. Those breakfast are required to provide one-third of the recommended dietary allowances for protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium and calories.

For More

Endless Fruit & Veggie Bar

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Tulsa Public Schools has piloted a new program. They are adding fruits and vegetable bars in their schools in an effort to curb childhood obesity and to add nutrition to their diets.

Lee Elementary is one of the first schools to try it out.

So far the students are enjoying the extra options to keep them healthy.

"I want to encourage the parents really to have the kids eat these healthy choices, because these are the habits they will have for the rest of their lives," said Hossein Akhtarkhavari, Child Nutrition Director

School nutrition officials say students can visit the fruit and vegetable bar endlessly.

Recess Discussion: Should it be mandatory?

Should Recess Be Mandatory?

Remember recess? Kids playing kickball or tag, hopping on the swings or skipping rope. Recess is endangered at many schools. To meet the demand for better academic performance, schools are cutting back on recess time. In some schools recess is more like study hall in a classroom. Is the decline of recess contributing to childhood obesity? Does recess help kids get along? Should the state make recess mandatory for all schools? Or is recess just fooling around?


Related Links:
* 'Should Recess Be A Required Course?' Everett Herald

* 'School Recess Gets Smaller; Adults are Dismayed,' New York Times

Study: Kids Will Eat Healthy School Meals

A University of Minnesota study that appeared in the Review of Agricultural Economics shows school lunch sales don’t decline when healthier meals are served and that more nutritious foods don’t necessarily cost schools more to produce.

The study contradicts the findings of previous studies, which showed students preferred fatty foods and that healthier meals cost more to make, the authors said. The researchers analyzed five years of data for 330 Minnesota public school districts and found the schools that served the healthiest lunches did not see a drop in demand. The study looked at compliance with federal standards for calories, nutrients, and fats.

While serving healthier meals does mean higher labor costs, they’re offset by the lower costs associated with nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables compared to processed foods, the researchers said. However, they acknowledged many districts needed to upgrade their kitchens and train their staff to prepare healthier foods. Study authors also suggested that schools using lunch program funding for incidentals redirect that money into nutrition.

More on healthy meals...

Renegade lunch lady saving kids' lives, one plate at a time

By Fran Fifis
CNN


(CNN) -- Ann Cooper is on a one-woman whirlwind campaign to change the way kids eat in schools. "We're killing our kids with food," she says.

Ann Cooper sees her work transforming school lunch programs as a way to leave a lasting impact.

Half of all the Hispanic and African-American kids born in 2000 and one-third of Caucasian kids will have diabetes in their lifetime, many before they graduate college, Cooper says, citing U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. "It's all because of what we are feeding them," she says. "It's all preventable."

Cooper, self-proclaimed renegade lunch lady and chef, is actively working against what she describes as entrenched interests -- fast-food companies and junk-food producers -- that she says profit from selling unhealthy foods to schools. They're "basically making money off our children's health and their future," she says. "I'm just so pissed off."

She wasn't always this way. Cooper used to be a big-shot celebrity chef who worked at tony resorts, on cruise ships, for hotel chains and prestigious film festivals. She's won numerous awards and is on boards for executive chefs, women chefs and the Alumni Committee of the Culinary Institute of America.

More on saving kids lives....

The Importance of Play

Curriculum Leadership Journal
Deidre Thian

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It’s a well-known proverb. The wisdom underpinning the proverb, that if Jack works all the time he will be both boring and bored, seems forgotten in some schools in the United States.

For other schools, the a key question – what should the playground that Jack uses at school be like? Research would suggest that ‘good’ school playgrounds, that is grounds that support physical, social, emotional and cognitive development, have three common characteristics. They support developmentally-appropriate activities for the physical, social, emotional and cognitive developmental range of the children that use the space – whether they are young children or older young adults. They exhibit diversity in the types of spaces provided and the range of activities supported. And, perhaps the most critical feature, the types of spaces provided and activities supported in school grounds are interesting to the user. If a type of space or equipment is not liked by the children – irrespective of whether it has been well-designed – it will not be used.

Some examples of some places/programs getting it right are in the United Kingdom, through advocacy and research by such organizations as Learning through Landscapes, which funded Titman’s seminal research on the effect of the physical environment of school grounds on children’s behavior and attitudes, and by government and private support being provided to schools to improve school grounds (eg Growing Schools Program). Similar initiatives are also occurring in parts of Canada and the United States (eg Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative, Seattle’s Grey to Green Program, and Peaceful Playgrounds Program).

For more information on playground design.....

Could NCLB Law be making kids fat?

According to a documentary directed by former Brigham Young University film student Steven Greenstreet, the way schools have reacted to the federal law contributes to a national childhood obesity epidemic. So do a lot of other factors that play out on the schools' stages.

Greenstreet, director of the award-winning documentary "This Divided State," about filmmaker Michael Moore's 2004 visit to Utah Valley State College, is putting the finishing touches on the film, "Killer at Large," produced by ShineBox Media Productions in Salt Lake City. The film, which Greenstreet plans to submit to 30 festivals, explores childhood obesity in America.

A dozen schoolteachers interviewed for the film said the federal No Child Left Behind policy is part of the problem, Greenstreet said. Vending machine junk food, what some call lax USDA school lunch standards, overpriced produce also are fingered as contributors, among a slew of other factors.

Utah health and education leaders tend to agree.

More on NCLB and childhood obesity film.....

Playgrounds Could Be Parks

I live on what's called "the Westside" of Los Angeles. Our local schools are in the 600 school Los Angeles Unified School District. My local elementary school called Kentwood Elementary is surrounded by 6 foot tall fences. On weekend and after school the school yard and playgrounds (like the majority of LAUSD schools) are closed and empty.

Slowly - way too slowly - but surely, Los Angeles city and school leaders are inching toward a common-sense plan that would benefit communities immeasurably: After hours, when schools aren't being used for instruction, they would be open for countless other uses.

Imagine: Playgrounds could be parks. Classrooms could be community meeting rooms. Arts and athletic facilities could enrich cultural and fitness opportunities for everyone.

This is, by the way, not just fantasy, but what the Los Angeles Unified School District promised voters when we approved billions of dollars in school bonds over recent years. The new campuses, we were told, would be hubs for community life.

Fortunately that is changing ... slowly.

On Wednesday the Los Angeles City Council approved a plan to expand agreements with the LAUSD to keep schools open for the public on nights and weekends. Under the proposal, a master joint-use agreement will be developed, and the school board is set to take up a similar proposal soon.

This is a good idea that should catch on. With the childhood obesity crisis research indicates that living close to a local park is important in children's physical activity levels.

Last week I took my granddaughter to our local park. It was 2 miles away. The closest elementary is about 3 blocks. The local elementary has green grass, a sandbox and a play structure and is MUCH more convenient. Tax payers pay for these facilities. Let's open them for public use.

Kids eat more fruits, vegetables when schools offer salad bar

A new UCLA study has found that elementary schools can significantly increase the frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption among low-income students by providing a lunch salad bar.

The findings, published in the December issue of the international peer-reviewed journal Public Health Nutrition, show that the frequency of students' fruit and vegetable consumption increased significantly — from 2.97 to 4.09 times daily — after a salad bar was introduced. In addition, students' mean daily intake of energy, cholesterol, saturated fat and total fat declined considerably.

"One of the major contributing factors to the high rate of overweight children in the United States is that they do not consume the daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables," said lead author Dr. Wendy Slusser, assistant professor of pediatrics at Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA and the UCLA School of Public Health. "Increasing the availability and accessibility to healthy foods is one way to impact children's diets. In turn, this sets up opportunities for kids to have repeated exposure to healthy food and positively impact their choices."

Kids eating more fruits and vegetables.....

Smile at the Bully Button

High-tech "bully buttons" are being installed in some Australian schools so students can alert educators and trigger video cameras to record such incidents. "If students are confronted with footage then there can be very little denial, but it also gives us a clearer perspective of what happened because kids often remember their part but don't have an overall perspective," said Thomas Carr College deputy principal Vera Treloar.

More on Bully Buttons....

All I REALLY NEED TO KNOW: Important learnings

In honor of a new school year I thought the following poem was an appropriate reminder of "important learnings" that are sometimes over -looked.

Robert Fulghum wrote the now famous poem that provides worldly advise, “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”.

What I learned in Kindergarten:
• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

The School Cafeteria, on a Diet

As students return to school this week, some are finding unusual entries on the list of class rules: fewer fried foods, smaller servings and no cupcakes.

School districts across the country have been taking steps to make food in schools healthier because of new federal guidelines and awareness that a growing number of children are overweight.

More on School Cafeteria Food.....http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/business/05junkfood.html?_r=1

Not “it”. Schools Ban Tag

Is tag really bad? TV stations, newspapers and website blogs across
the country picked up on the elementary schools across the nation that
admitted to banning tag. Most responses considered tag harmless.

As a former elementary school principal, I can relate to the “banning”epidemic. When my office filled with 10 kids on discipline issues before school started each morning I too banned before school recess. But I quickly learned that the decision was a poor one. Too often we resort to extremes in times of frustration. The real problem was untrained playground supervisors, lack of playground rules, a few children arriving before supervisors were assigned and not enough organized activities for children to play, etc.

Some helpful hints to improving your playground - Make sure students have enough activity choices and equipment to participate in games. It helps to be proactive and communicate both playground rules and rationale to the community at the beginning of the school year. Reactive responses are sometimes necessary but put us on the defense.

Finally, the issue is not so much” is tag bad”, as “is your playground good”? Schools that devote time to improving their playground reap many rewards including: fewer playground conflicts, decrease in bullying, fewer injuries and more active children.

For more information on improving your school playground –
Visit our website at www.peacefulplaygrounds.com/benefits.htm
Or write Melinda@peacefulplaygrounds.com

Addressing Bullying in Schools: New Research

Kids who bully others and kids who are victimized by bullies each face an increased risk of psychiatric disorders by early adulthood, according to a study recently published in the journal Pediatrics. According to comprehensive study data, frequent bullying behavior in childhood reliably predicted antisocial personality, substance abuse, and depressive and anxiety disorders. Frequent episodes of victimization predicted future anxiety disorders in adolescence.

Data collection for the study began in 1989 on 2,540 boys born in 1981. Information about bullying behavior was gathered from parents, teachers and children when the boys were 8 years old, and final mental health outcomes were determined from medical records and psychiatric evaluations of the boys when they were between the ages of 18 and 23.

Bullying can't always be prevented, but once it has occurred, addressing it becomes a matter of some urgency. According to experts at the Mayo Clinic, bullying is becoming a more common phenomenon.

For more on Addressing Bullying in schools: New Research and Tips.
Regan Zambri & Long Attorneys at Law Website Blog