I thought I was done blogging, but Bettina over at The Lunch Tray has written a manifesto in response to her children being consistently "rewarded" with junk food in the class room (the treat bucket is one of my pet peeves as a person who has worked in the public school system) that I just had to share!
I decided to take my own advise earlier this month and do some grassroots advocacy for the FIT Kids Act. Using the very cute poster that the American Heart Association has designed (as seen below), I put posters up around campus to increase knowledge of the cause.
You can download your own version of this poster here in order to canvas your own community.
Below is a snapshot of a poster I places on a bulletin board.
What is Nutrition in Education: Workshops and After-School Programs
When I first started this blog, I spoke of how it was my dream to have nutrition education as part of regular school curriculum. As we know, this is a long way off. For most children, nutrition education comes in the form of after-school programs and workshops. Some nationally recognized after school programs include:
A great many programs exist on the local level also, frequently funded by your states Board of Education or by Extension Agencies, as well as the private sector and non-profit sector. For example, Girl Scouts in Kentucky is currently running a short nutrition education program for little girls through the school system ( I had the pleasure of going to one of these lessons with a fellow dietetics student earlier in the semester).
Girl Scouts make fruit salad at a cooking class
by justjorie
After school programs are important as the National Center for Education Statistics reports that only 35% of teachers provide stand-alone nutrition lessons to their students, and even when nutrition information is incorporated into other lessons such as the science of digestion or health science, children are exposures to an average of about 13 hours a school year. Considering children spend in excess of 700 hours of school this year, this number is fairly meager.
After-school and workshop nutrition education programs tend to address both physical activity and dietary behaviors. A literary review of such interventions reveals that such programs are responsible for modest changes in behavior, particular changes in behavior that promote weight maintenance and prevent overweight. For these two reasons alone, nutrition after school or as special events should be strongly encouraged in our schools.
In the Minneapolis public schools, we are supposed to have 15 minutes
to eat, which would be bad enough. But realistically we get only 10 to
11 minutes (we have been timing it).
Having to rush to eat is part of the reason for the obesity epidemic,
eating disorders, indigestion and kids not doing well in school. There
is research that proves all of these points. Kids just need more time to
eat at school.
The following is the first two paragraphs of an article two sixth graders, Talia Bradley and Antonia Ritter, wrote regarding school lunch policies for the Star Tribune. Not only is this a high quality and well researched article, but these two young ladies make a number of extremely valid points. I strongly recommend reading the entire article! Good job girls! Here is to a future in advocacy!
Throughout this blog I have spoken a lot about asking representatives to support a bill that is currently being considered by one committee or another. But have you ever considered that you can impact policies before they are even made?
The United States Department of Agriculture is currently reviewing it's Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP). The purpose of FFVP is to provide children with a variety of fruits and vegetables as healthy snack options at participating schools.
With the help of Prevent Obesity I have written a letter to Tom Vilsack, Secretary to the USDA, to let him know I support FFVP and requesting that the review addresses a few key points.
Dear Secretary Vilsack,
I am writing to show my support of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable
Program and your effort to standardize it so that more children will
benefit. Having a program that teaches students about the importance of
eating fruits and vegetables by allowing them to try the produce helps
educate them about nutrition and helps kids’ lead healthier lives.
As you finalize your proposal, I ask that you include the following requirements:
1. States conduct outreach to schools serving the highest percentage of children eligible for free or reduced-price meals;
2. State agencies provide schools with the training and technical assistance necessary to operate the program efficiently;
3. Schools implement the program five days per week;
4. Schools incorporate nutrition education into the program; and
5. Schools use only fresh, fresh-cut, and nutritionally equivalent fruits and vegetables in the program.
To ensure that schools can reach the goal of serving nutritious
snacks as part of this program, it is also important that your agency
allow them to use a portion of their total funding for non-food
costs—such as the purchase or lease of kitchen equipment.
This program can and does help improve students’ dietary intake,
which in turn reduces their risk for obesity, diabetes, high blood
pressure and other serious chronic diseases. Healthier children do
better in school and we all benefit.
If you would like to let the USDA know you also support FFVP, you can do so here.
Sarah Wu, the author of Fed Up with Lunch and a blog of the same name, is an amazing school lunch reform advocate. For a year, Wu committed to eating lunch as her students did in the school cafeteria, and documented each lunch so the public to see what was really being served. Her book and blog got a lot of attention from health advocates and the general public alike and has been a key element in recent health reform.
Recently Wu blogged about the reaction she gets from people when she tells them about the work she does. "Parents should just pack a lunch for their kids” she is told time and time again. But this is the furthest thing we can do to cause reform.
I had some thoughts of my own to share:
I strongly recommend checking out Fed Up with Lunch - it is among the best school lunch reform resources out there.
Pink slime, or lean finely-textured beef (LFTB) as it is referred to in the industry, has been a hot topic in the past few months in regards to school lunches. It is not that pink slime is a new concept - in fact Jamie Oliver spoke about it on Food Revolution a year ago today, and there is evidence that ammonia treating of beef and other mechanically separated meat, has been available to the public, and part of the food system for at least the past 20 years.
The topic is fairly complex, and honestly I do not know enough about it to post an informed opinion. However I feel that it is such a hot topic in school nutrition that I ought to mention the subject and at least direct you towards more information.
I will let Jamie Oliver explain what Pink Slime is (it should be noted that in his video, he is making a small, by hand batch of LFTB - and it turns out looking a lot like minced meat - when mechanically separated and treated, the product is visually more like pink soft serve ice cream in appearance than like minced meat).
The public attention LFTB has received in the last couple of months has mostly been due to Bettina Siegel, blogger at The Lunch Tray, starting a Change.org petition entitled Tell USDA to STOP Using Pink Slime in School Food! Bettina is more or less an expert on what is going on with LFTB and school lunches, as well school lunches in general, so if you would like to read more on the topic, I suggest heading over to The Lunch Tray
I have already spoken briefly about Physical Education when discussing the importance of recess as an element of Nutrition in Education. Mostly, I just spoke about the lack of vigorous activity children get during PE as a result of how the class is so frequently structured. This does not, by any means, indicate that children should not have PS classes as part of their curriculum.
Unfortunately, PE is one of those "elective"classes that when school budgets get cut, are sadly shown the door. Even when schools have PE classes, reductions in the time spent in PE have become common, as PE is not part of the standardized testing that schools are required to complete each year. Alarmingly more and more schools don't even have a gym for PE even if they still have a PE teacher. This is happening locally - in Clark County, Ky, they are currently building a new High School - a high school that will not have gym, as it is not in the budget. The adolescents of this school will have to ride a bus to the middle school in order to use the facilities. And most concerning - the school board does not see this as an alarming problem!
Rather that have you read about it, I actually found a fantastic video about the state of PE in our schools and its relationship to the obesity crisis. The video also features a number of PE teachers, physical education specialists and schools who are doing their part of make children more active inside and outside the PE classroom.
The good news is that there are people out there who understand the importance of physical activity and are leading the charge on change. Fitness Integrated with Teaching (FIT) Kids Act (H.R.1057/S.576) is a federal legislation has been re-introduced in the 112th Congress by
Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jim Gerlach (R-PA) in the House of
Representatives, and by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) in the Senate. The
bill would establish a framework for schools to closely look at the
quality and quantity of PE they are providing, and to supply parents
with that information to better understand the PE their kids are
receiving.
Unfortunately, this Bill has been stuck in senate for over a year. If you would like to help get the bill moving again the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Heart Association both have some awesome suggestions and form letters that you can add your details to and send to your Senators, available here and here respectively.
At the beginning of this blog we also discussed House Bill 68, which is specific to Kentucky schools. This bill would require a 45 minutes per week
of physical activity for half day kindergarten and 90 minutes per week for full day kindergarten
through grade five. Like the FIT Kids Act, this bill is also stuck in committee. If you would like to know more about this bill and what you can do to help move it along, visit this blog post.
If you are not from Kentucky and would like to know more about your states policies of physical education, you can visit this site which lists all policies relating to PE in each state.
Name: E Pace From: Eastern Kentucky University About me: This is a blog about Nutrition in Education: The awesome programs that already exist, and what we can do to makes things even better!
