On food, exercise, and health
March 14th, 2007,This morning Melanie Reid, who works at the Just Food Northfield Community Co-op, and I met with the director of the preschool that her son and my daughter attend. We wanted to share our concerns about snacks at the school and their nutritional value. We’re both concerned that the snack menu includes Pop-Tarts, donut holes, cheese puffs, and other unhealthy foods.
I shared some information that I’d gathered: a list of alternative snacks that I made, some printouts on healthy snacks from the Mayo Clinic and KidsHealth, and another printout from Allina Clinics, a local healthcare provider, about “fighting childhood obesity.” I read aloud some of the following information from the latter:
- In the United States, the number of overweight children, ages 6 to 19, has tripled in the last two decades.
- In Minnesota, 15 to 22 percent of adolescents and 13 percent of children younger than age 5 are overweight.
Studies suggest that future life spans will get shorter if childhood obesity rates do not go down.
- About 60 percent of overweight 5 to 10 year-olds have a least one risk factor of heart disease – such as high blood pressure or cholesterol – while 25 percent have two or more.
- In addition to heart disease, being overweight makes children prone to many other physical problems, like type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, impaired balance, and bone and joint ailments.
- “Fat kids” often experience bullying, teasing, discrimination and other social problems. This often causes low self-esteem, depression and other emotional health issues.
- Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight adults. This puts them at risk of getting obesity-related diseases, such as arthritis, some cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
I’d like to repeat and emphasize one quote, which I’ve seen confirmed elsewhere: ” Studies suggest that future life spans will get shorter if childhood obesity rates do not go down.”
Melanie said that she would be giving the director some more information. She hopes to read a book called The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children, about the effect of particular foods and food additives.
The director of the school was understanding and shared her own knowledge about similar issues. We had a good conversation and there was a lot of constructive back-and-forth about the issues involved. She promised to speak to the food service coordinator at the school and see if the snack menu couldn’t be altered. I should add that on some days the school already serves healthy snacks such as bananas, oranges, and apples.
By the way, in checking the spelling of Pop-tarts, I came across the Pop-tarts web site. There, we (and our kids) are told that Pop-tarts are “crazy good” and we can take a walk through “crazy good world.” Hmm. If there’s any truth to the “crazy makers” hypothesis, Kellog’s should reconsider their slogan.
I invite someone out there to revise the Wikipedia article on Pop-Tarts by adding the nutrition information.
Also, in working on this post, I came across a page from Allina titled “Walk to school.” Here’s what it says:
To stay or become healthy, children need a variety of activities each day. Walking or cycling to and from school is an ideal way to get some of that activity at no extra cost.
A 15-minute walk to school in the morning and home in the afternoon – 30 minutes a day – can help prevent some forms of cancer, depression, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and osteoporosis.
Parents and communities can take these steps to increase the safety of a child’s walk to school:
- Walk with your child. (Your health will benefit, too.)
- Drive slowly near schools and in neighborhoods.
- Teach children to cross streets at marked crossings.
- Provide safe, well-maintained walkways separate from vehicles.
- Provide plenty of well-designed, accessible crosswalks. Monitor them when necessary.
Strong stuff. Now we just need to get leaders and the public on board with this.
March 14th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Pop tarts taste good, but if you eat them, you’re crazy! Or maybe: they make you crazy?
March 14th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Good job on taking the initiative on this one.
Another culprit worth investigating is ‘fruit in syrup’. I’d bet they’ve got twice the sugar of a Pop-Tart(TM).
Excuse me, “It’s got crazy corn syrup, yo!”
March 15th, 2007 at 6:23 am
My apologies for misspelling Melanie Reid’s last name in an earlier version of this post.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:19 am
I am a former teacher of children grades 1-4 and believe me the snack thing became so outrageous,
I had to add a healthy food class to my art, dance and theatre classes. Not all, but most of the kids eating
sugar, salt and rancid oils from processed foods showed marked behavioral changes that made them
less inclined to learn and participate in an accepetable manner.
All our children were picked up by parents after school, except for the ones who were
walked home by older siblings. My point here being that there is a great concern for safety, and rightly so, as children walk the streets alone, even in Northfield. And this is an issue that needs addressing so that both women and children can walk about freely, as nature intended. These kids need to be outdoors and have fun, burn up calories, set the parameters and realize their potential for the strength they will have as adults.
I would hope that some of our senior citizens might form a bus stop watch group to help with this problem.
It’s a lot to consider, but we must treat these things holistically, taking into consideration all the aspects
of the child’s life in order to be effective.
Bright Spencer
March 17th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Thanks for your comment, Bright. One thing that is associated with the Safe Routes to School program is the “Walking Schoolbus,” where parents accompany children to school. It would be great to see that here to address the safety issue. I like the senior citizen idea too.
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Bill, check out this article about food and behavior. It originally appeared in my alumni magazine On Wisconsin.
here is an excerpt:
In 1998, Wisconsin’s Appleton Central Alternative High School was dealing with worrisome discipline problems in the classrooms. Students were caught with drugs and weapons. They were hostile to each other and to their teachers, and behavior was out of control.
Did the school turn to a psychologist, a consultant or an education specialist? No – they contacted Paul Stitt, the owner and founder of Natural Ovens Bakery.
“When the Appleton school system came to us and said could you help us, we said we’d love to,” Stitt says. “And we said, “Certainly, we know how to correct the situation. Throw out the vending machines with all the high-sugar, high-fat foods; throw out the pop machines loaded with sugar; put in water coolers; and start educating kids about what they need to do to be good to their bodies.”
http://www.crisisprevention.com/whatsnew/CRNews/CRNews_Dec2005/CRN_12-4_NDenison.html
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Jerry, Thanks for this link. I’m glad to see that some schools have already figured this out.
March 23rd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Well done, Bill. I admire your intervention.
As you know, we’ve been addressing this issue for some time. In grade school and secondary settings, the situation is pretty grim: the nexus between adequate school funding (of which there is less and less) and captive-market junk food serving and vending (more and more) leads schools into dependence on junk. And the junkers know it!
Schools should be offering healthy alternatives and ridding themselves of crap. This is up to enlightened parents like you to pursue; there will be little movement by schools, industry or the political class otherwise. It’s also a national issue, as we all end up footing the health care bill for junkers’ profits.
March 27th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Some good advice for us Baby Boomers above as well!
Thanks, Bill.
May 7th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
[...] On March 14 I wrote about my attempt to persuade our daughter’s preschool to change its snack menu. To date, there has been no change. I will cross my fingers, remain hopeful, and hope others will suggest changes as well. [...]
August 22nd, 2007 at 1:06 pm
[...] Back in March and May, I wrote about the snacks at my daughter’s pre-school. I’m happy to say that the doughnut holes and Pop-Tarts are gone from the August snack menu, but the cheese puffs remain. Are they gone permanently? We shall see. [...]