Obesity Crisis:
NEA today, October/November 2010
“Students who are healthy learn better, are better able to concentrate on their work, have better attendance and perform better in class.” People are trying to teach healthy life skills, which is hard to do when students are being fed muffins, breakfast bars, and juice. Some students are opting for the apple and the orange juice (but few are). I worry about child obesity because my sister is a person that has been battling obesity her entire life. We always had a nice breakfast at home, and we made our lunches for school. But like most students the exchange of food happened pretty often. Exchanging a healthy apple for a bag of chips. Schools across the country are trying to change that. They are not offering “bad” food in vending machines or in the lunch lines. Schools are starting to grow there own food in gardens that the students are taking care of. Shakopee will be doing this as well. Unfortunately it might not make a big enough dent in the food service. Many schools don’t have money for nice food options like fruit and vegetables (to much money for the healthy foods). Research done by USA Today concluded that the meat school use is worse than fast-food chains. The USDA is suppose to be inspecting schools twice a year for there performance, this is not happening because they are not keeping great records, and schools have to pay for the inspection (NO MONEY).
http://www.nea.org/home/37485.htm
To fix this schools are starting to have times during the day where students can workout, have a healthy snack which improves there attendance and performance in class. Schools are changing fundraisers from cookie sales to wrapping paper or magazines. Mrs. Obama has started the “Let’s Move” campaign to get students moving and eating healthy. Her mission is to have 1250 schools participating in her program by June of 2011. To help with this is the US Department of Agriculture, to reduce the amount of fat, sugar, and salt. By raising the amount of whole wheat, fruits and vegetables.
http://www.letsmove.gov/healthierschoolfood.php
Obesity is a growing problem in this country. If we are able to stop now hopefully in the future our students will live a very healthy life. By starting now we can have cooking classes the teach nutritional ways of cooking, health classes that focus more on obesity and what it does to the body. And classes that allow students to attend and take care of gardens where we can eat healthy food. All of these ideas are obtainable, just we get stuck with who is going to pay??
Think about it.
Sticking with the themes... "Make it work" and "What's in our control?" do you think there are changes we could make within our current framework and budget? I am thinking in particular about strategies we could use to *move* our students and spend less time in desks. Any ideas? Anything that could maybe be brought up with BLT? Any ways we could maybe rethink study halls? Hmmm...
ReplyDeleteThis is my 2nd attempt at a comment to your post. My computer shut down before I could post, so hopefully this one will be as thoughtful. I have concerns about this topic as well, especially from a parent's perspective. I have a 2nd grader and a 3 year old. I like to cook and luckily my children love most vegetables and fruits, but already with young children some weeks we have something going every night of the week. I must admit that the weeks that we have crazy busy schedules, we eat out more than we should. It's hard for me to imagine what it's going to be like when they get a little older. I can see how so many families get into unhealthy habits and fast/frozen food becomes the norm. I also feel that a lot of responsibility has been placed on schools because the reality is that many kids come to school so that they can eat 2 regular meals a day. I think the Environmental Learning Center could be a great resource not only for contributing fruits/vegetables to our school but hopefully students will get active by participating in the planting and maintenance of the gardens. The Obama’s had a community garden this summer to do the same thing. Are kids more likely to eat the fruits and vegetables that they planted and helped to grow? It’s worth a try.
ReplyDeleteLet’s Move sounds like a good initiative. There are days when I know I would be more productive if I could take a 15 minute walk or do some yoga or stretching to get myself back on track. I’m sure most students could too. I know my 2nd grader loves PE days and recess and, according to him, there is never enough time spent on either of those. Kids need time to move and be active in order to sit and learn for the rest (longest part) of their day. I think teachers also need to be aware of that need and find other consequences for discipline/behavior issues so they are not taking away what limited active time kids have.
Since we may not have control over the type of food served or the amount of time we can allow kids to “be active” during school, maybe for now all we can do is be good models for our own children and students and share our ideas and concerns with them. I bet we could get some good feedback from them as well.