http://www.associatedcontent.com/pop_print.shtml?content_type=article&content_type_id=112672
Associated Content
By Beth Callahan
Published January 09, 2007
Childhood obesity has become a large problem in the United States and not enough blame is put on the parents for their child being this way. Their are some cases that do not apply such as medical problems or children sneaking food. However, even the sneaking of food could be a result of bad parenting from earlier in life. As a parent, it is important to teach your child to eat healthy and responsibly. Here are some tips that you should follow so that you do not affect your child's eating habit negatively.Clean your plate- I am sure that most of us have heard this at the dinner table at least once when we were young. However, this is a bad practice to enforce. Children go through different stages depending on their ages. Unless you are noticing a huge drop in weight or your child is refusing to eat any food at all, then you should not be concerned. For the most part, the child will eat until they feel full. When you force a child to eat after feeling full, you are teaching them an eating habit that can stay with them all of their lives. Even if they do not become obese as a child, it could be a small part of why the develop obesity later on in life. This can also make eating time a power struggle which the child will learn that they can get back at you for something by not eating anything.Watch your mouth- As adults, we all have habits of saying things to ourselves or under our breath. Children are curious creatures and pick up on just about everything. Adults who over eat at meal time themselves tend to make comments at the table such as " I am stuffed but this is so good" and then keep eating, or " I am stuffed" and then order dessert anyway. While these comments are just made in conversation, children are picking up that you should still have dessert even when you are to full and that if something is good you should eat it all. You may think that I am over analyzing this, but children over analyze everything. Even if they do not subconsciously connect the two, it is something that is learned by habit. Such as you always folding the hand towel after your done using it simply because your mother always did. You do not consciously make that choice, it was learned by habit.Exercise- Make sure that your child gets a least 30 minutes of physical activity every day. You can even get them on an exercise regimen. Kids will take to anything easily. A lot of children seem to enjoy Yoga or Pilate's. You can also try a dance aerobics class, This is a great way to fight obesity or maintain a healthy weight for your child. This also teaches your child that exercise should be a part of their everyday life and that it is fun!I am not by any means placing all the blame on the parents. Some children just decide on their own that they love food and want to eat it constantly. However, these tips will greatly reduce your child's chances of having childhood obesity or learning eating habits that could result in obesity later in life. If there is no reasonable explanation as to why your child is gaining weight, you should check with their pedestrian immediately since this may be caused by a medical condition. Hopefully, your child should never become obese because putting on the weight is a lot easier than taking it off.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Sunday, April 1, 2007
British State May Take Obese Boy into Protective Custody
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/162078/british_state_may_take_obese_boy_into.html
Associated Content
By Mitzi Speranzella
Published February 26, 2007
An eight year old child could be taken away from his mother and put under protective custody in Britain, because he is morbidly obese. The mother of a 196-pound boy has defended her refusal to stop feeding him junk food.
Nicola McKeown is a single mom who says her son Connor McCreaddie refuses to eat any healthy foods. "He likes processed foods and if I try him with any salad, vegetables, fruit, he just refuses to eat it or spits it out," she said on BBC Radio on Monday. "When a child won't eat anything else, you've got to feed them what they like."
McKeown is facing a child protection conference with North Tyneside Council on Tuesday. This is the equivalent of a Child Protection Agency hearing in the US.
The last resort of the conference would be for social workers to put him into the care of the state, but McKeown is confident she can help her son lose weight. Connor has already lost 21 pounds following advice from health workers and a dietician starting in January.
A suggestion to put a lock on the refrigerator was firmly rejected by the 35 year old mother. "I wouldn't go that far," she said. "That's not the way to do it, starving your child."
"What's interesting for me, and everything I've read over the weekend about this issue, it's always been about diet; it's about what he (Connor) eats. There's no mention of exercise," he told the BBC.Former British Olympic runner Roger Black said.
"Many, many children in this country are growing up doing very, very little exercise and if you create a culture of young children not used to doing exercise on a daily basis then these problems do happen," Black noted. Black recently spent time in an inner city London school encouraging 12-year-olds to exercise and become more active. It is a program linked to the 2012 Olympics. He added,"The project I've just been involved with is not about creating Olympic medalists for 2012, it's about encouraging young people to do more exercise in school time. It absolutely should be compulsory that children do more exercise than our children are doing now, because it is staggering that some children in this country are doing less than an hour's exercise a week in school."
Colin Waine, the director of the National Obesity Forum in Nottingham, England, called Connor's lifestyle "extremely dangerous". He said that Conner is at a high risk of developing diabetes in his teens, and cardiovascular and nervous system problems in his 20s."
He's really at risk of dying by the time he's 30," Waine said.
Associated Content
By Mitzi Speranzella
Published February 26, 2007
An eight year old child could be taken away from his mother and put under protective custody in Britain, because he is morbidly obese. The mother of a 196-pound boy has defended her refusal to stop feeding him junk food.
Nicola McKeown is a single mom who says her son Connor McCreaddie refuses to eat any healthy foods. "He likes processed foods and if I try him with any salad, vegetables, fruit, he just refuses to eat it or spits it out," she said on BBC Radio on Monday. "When a child won't eat anything else, you've got to feed them what they like."
McKeown is facing a child protection conference with North Tyneside Council on Tuesday. This is the equivalent of a Child Protection Agency hearing in the US.
The last resort of the conference would be for social workers to put him into the care of the state, but McKeown is confident she can help her son lose weight. Connor has already lost 21 pounds following advice from health workers and a dietician starting in January.
A suggestion to put a lock on the refrigerator was firmly rejected by the 35 year old mother. "I wouldn't go that far," she said. "That's not the way to do it, starving your child."
"What's interesting for me, and everything I've read over the weekend about this issue, it's always been about diet; it's about what he (Connor) eats. There's no mention of exercise," he told the BBC.Former British Olympic runner Roger Black said.
"Many, many children in this country are growing up doing very, very little exercise and if you create a culture of young children not used to doing exercise on a daily basis then these problems do happen," Black noted. Black recently spent time in an inner city London school encouraging 12-year-olds to exercise and become more active. It is a program linked to the 2012 Olympics. He added,"The project I've just been involved with is not about creating Olympic medalists for 2012, it's about encouraging young people to do more exercise in school time. It absolutely should be compulsory that children do more exercise than our children are doing now, because it is staggering that some children in this country are doing less than an hour's exercise a week in school."
Colin Waine, the director of the National Obesity Forum in Nottingham, England, called Connor's lifestyle "extremely dangerous". He said that Conner is at a high risk of developing diabetes in his teens, and cardiovascular and nervous system problems in his 20s."
He's really at risk of dying by the time he's 30," Waine said.
Friday, March 16, 2007
"I Say the Hell With It!"
Slate.com
Sandbox: Keeping an Eye on Kids and Parents
"I Say the Hell With It!"School lunches are making kids fat—but collard greens aren't the solution.
By Ann Hulbert
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003, at 1:43 PM ET
Congress is preparing to review the $10 billion annual federal school nutrition program this spring, responding to a widespread sense of crisis. The proportion of severely overweight children and adolescents has tripled over the last 30 years, to 15 percent. Health problems have multiplied; Type 2 diabetes, which used to be called "adult onset diabetes," has now encroached on childhood.
But as America's battle with an epidemic of childhood obesity enters the schools, it's worth being on guard against severely inflated expectations. As if the goal of getting kids to consume moderately healthier lunches weren't daunting enough, some reformers seem to envision wholesale re-education of students' palates. Count on Californians to be out in front of the gastronomic crusade. "Kids don't like Shakespeare, but it's good for them. It's the same with food," insisted a champion of Berkeley High School's recent quest to convert students to "nutritious, fresh, tasty, locally grown food that reflects Berkeley's cultural diversity."
Given the dismal quality of school food—from canned government-surplus staples in the lunchroom to Coke-and-junk-stocked vending machines in the halls, with no trace of vitamin-rich roughage in sight—a pendulum swing to hyper-wholesomeness is hardly surprising. Dietary issues have always tended to inspire zealotry in this country, where "the perfect diet," "the total health makeover," the "revolutionary weight control program" exert great allure. But when it comes to adults telling children what to eat, the contest of wills is rarely just about controlling appetite—it's also about kids resisting adult control. In other words, the real problem isn't providing children with healthier lunch options; it's figuring out how to make them actually eat what's served up.
Take what happened at Berkeley High. The public school's healthy alternative to "the airline food model" included organic pork tacos with fresh tortillas—a specialty of the Berkeley queen of cuisine, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. There were also such delicacies as pesticide-free salads and stir-fried tofu. But even (or especially?) kids reared with a fresh-is-best ethos turned up their noses at the offerings, the New York Times reported. They bought sweets and sodas instead or hurried to nearby fast-food outlets. The program closed down this fall, with the director of nutrition services for the district still vowing that "we are committed to re-establishing healthy food."
Advocates of super-nutritious lunches may point to the success of a program in Opelika, Ala.—an initiative that was also touted lately in the Times. Opelika's menu is down-home by comparison to Berkeley's Chez-Panisse-style approach, yet just as high-minded. Courtesy of local farmers, students in the rural district of Opelika are served fresh lima beans, butter cream peas, black-eyed peas, collard and turnip greens. And they actually eat the stuff—but that's only because they aren't allowed off school property and vending machines aren't allowed on it. Opelika is unusual in other ways, too: Its school kitchens, unlike most American schools, are equipped to cook food, not just heat it up, and parents and school officials have been happy to fork over extra funds. In short, this wholesome food model (like Berkeley's) is not readily replicable.
Even if it were, the collard-and-turnip-greens ideal shouldn't set the standard for lunch reform. Public schools have their plates full without taking on the (hopeless) task of turning junk-food enthusiasts into eager veggie-eaters. ("I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it": The complaint dates back three-quarters of a century.) A more feasible—and more useful—aim would be to help kids become wiser fast-food consumers. After all, their lunch hours are rushed. (As one poor Berkeley student remarked, "no one can appreciate cuisine" when there's barely time to sit down.) And they're going to be eating on the run for years to come.
There is a model out there: Subway, the sub sandwich enterprise founded in 1965 and first franchised in 1974, which last year surpassed McDonald's with more than 13,000 outlets across the United States. Subway doesn't require a perfect or revolutionary dietary regimen (much less an elaborate kitchen: Its franchises are cheap and often cramped, with a set-up most schools could probably match). It markets ordinary cold cuts (which even kids like) as a shortcut to wholesomeness (which is what everybody really wants, not least parents and schools faced with picky eaters). And its company history is itself evidence that eating better need not entail a total health makeover—just some tactical maneuvers.
Remember the Subway of the early 1970s? It was known for the BMT—the "biggest, meatiest, tastiest" sub, stuffed with salami, pepperoni, ham, and bologna, hardly an example of organic wholesomeness. But the Subway of the late 1990s carved out a hugely expanded niche with an aroma of baking bread and a pitch for smaller, fresher sandwiches featuring "seven under 6 grams of fat." It has stuck to the same basic ingredients through thick and thin, and it packages healthier options as small choices rather big sacrifices: pile on the peppers and pickles, hold the mayo, vary the bread. Unlike McDonald's and Taco Bell—which abandoned the McLean Deluxe burger and the Border Lights menu in the early '90s—Subway successfully taught us that we could like healthy fast food.
Subway's menu does not promise organic salvation—the closest it has ever come to fruit is the Fruizle smoothie; for dessert, there are cookies rather than, say, apples—but for the most part the sub menu adds up to many fewer calories and a fraction of the fat of the burger-and-fries alternative. And by not requiring a lifestyle transformation, the scaled-down hero can encourage even the least health-food minded to take steps in the right direction, with unexpected results—as evidenced by twentysomething Jared Fogel, a former 425-pound fatso, who, in 2000, became the franchise's poster boy. After a year of eating only Subway's lowest-fat sandwiches instead of his usual mega-Mac diet, Fogel had lost 245 pounds—and it had felt "a little like feasting," he said, "rather than totally depriving myself."
Nutrition activists, understandably enough, may be alarmed by the spread of corporate logos in public schools (according to Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, the American School Food Service Association estimates that nearly a third of public high schools serve "branded fast food," from Taco Bell to Pizza Hut). But schools don't have to buy the Subway trademark to learn from the Subway strategy. With 28 franchises actually on school grounds so far, and a thousand delivery contracts, Subway has proved a big hit with administrators desperate, as Schlosser reports, to have "kids ... think school lunch is a cool thing, the cafeteria a cool place, that we're 'with it,' that we're not institutional." In the Northwest Independent School District near Fort Worth, Texas, the new Subway franchise whips ups batches of three different subs before each of three lunch periods—there's no time for custom-made fare. And the students flock to it. Without much trouble, the lunch ladies who now dish up soggy greens and mystery meat could be handing out fresh baked bread, recognizable cold cuts, and veggie toppings that plenty of teens—even the trendsetters—would happily eat. After all, Saturday Night Live and Letterman have already made Jared "the Subway guy" a nebishy celebrity for an age of irony—a pragmatist rather than a purist in the realm of appetite, the kind of proselytizer a kid can stomach.Ann Hulbert is the author of Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children.Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2078416/
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Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Sandbox: Keeping an Eye on Kids and Parents
"I Say the Hell With It!"School lunches are making kids fat—but collard greens aren't the solution.
By Ann Hulbert
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003, at 1:43 PM ET
Congress is preparing to review the $10 billion annual federal school nutrition program this spring, responding to a widespread sense of crisis. The proportion of severely overweight children and adolescents has tripled over the last 30 years, to 15 percent. Health problems have multiplied; Type 2 diabetes, which used to be called "adult onset diabetes," has now encroached on childhood.
But as America's battle with an epidemic of childhood obesity enters the schools, it's worth being on guard against severely inflated expectations. As if the goal of getting kids to consume moderately healthier lunches weren't daunting enough, some reformers seem to envision wholesale re-education of students' palates. Count on Californians to be out in front of the gastronomic crusade. "Kids don't like Shakespeare, but it's good for them. It's the same with food," insisted a champion of Berkeley High School's recent quest to convert students to "nutritious, fresh, tasty, locally grown food that reflects Berkeley's cultural diversity."
Given the dismal quality of school food—from canned government-surplus staples in the lunchroom to Coke-and-junk-stocked vending machines in the halls, with no trace of vitamin-rich roughage in sight—a pendulum swing to hyper-wholesomeness is hardly surprising. Dietary issues have always tended to inspire zealotry in this country, where "the perfect diet," "the total health makeover," the "revolutionary weight control program" exert great allure. But when it comes to adults telling children what to eat, the contest of wills is rarely just about controlling appetite—it's also about kids resisting adult control. In other words, the real problem isn't providing children with healthier lunch options; it's figuring out how to make them actually eat what's served up.
Take what happened at Berkeley High. The public school's healthy alternative to "the airline food model" included organic pork tacos with fresh tortillas—a specialty of the Berkeley queen of cuisine, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. There were also such delicacies as pesticide-free salads and stir-fried tofu. But even (or especially?) kids reared with a fresh-is-best ethos turned up their noses at the offerings, the New York Times reported. They bought sweets and sodas instead or hurried to nearby fast-food outlets. The program closed down this fall, with the director of nutrition services for the district still vowing that "we are committed to re-establishing healthy food."
Advocates of super-nutritious lunches may point to the success of a program in Opelika, Ala.—an initiative that was also touted lately in the Times. Opelika's menu is down-home by comparison to Berkeley's Chez-Panisse-style approach, yet just as high-minded. Courtesy of local farmers, students in the rural district of Opelika are served fresh lima beans, butter cream peas, black-eyed peas, collard and turnip greens. And they actually eat the stuff—but that's only because they aren't allowed off school property and vending machines aren't allowed on it. Opelika is unusual in other ways, too: Its school kitchens, unlike most American schools, are equipped to cook food, not just heat it up, and parents and school officials have been happy to fork over extra funds. In short, this wholesome food model (like Berkeley's) is not readily replicable.
Even if it were, the collard-and-turnip-greens ideal shouldn't set the standard for lunch reform. Public schools have their plates full without taking on the (hopeless) task of turning junk-food enthusiasts into eager veggie-eaters. ("I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it": The complaint dates back three-quarters of a century.) A more feasible—and more useful—aim would be to help kids become wiser fast-food consumers. After all, their lunch hours are rushed. (As one poor Berkeley student remarked, "no one can appreciate cuisine" when there's barely time to sit down.) And they're going to be eating on the run for years to come.
There is a model out there: Subway, the sub sandwich enterprise founded in 1965 and first franchised in 1974, which last year surpassed McDonald's with more than 13,000 outlets across the United States. Subway doesn't require a perfect or revolutionary dietary regimen (much less an elaborate kitchen: Its franchises are cheap and often cramped, with a set-up most schools could probably match). It markets ordinary cold cuts (which even kids like) as a shortcut to wholesomeness (which is what everybody really wants, not least parents and schools faced with picky eaters). And its company history is itself evidence that eating better need not entail a total health makeover—just some tactical maneuvers.
Remember the Subway of the early 1970s? It was known for the BMT—the "biggest, meatiest, tastiest" sub, stuffed with salami, pepperoni, ham, and bologna, hardly an example of organic wholesomeness. But the Subway of the late 1990s carved out a hugely expanded niche with an aroma of baking bread and a pitch for smaller, fresher sandwiches featuring "seven under 6 grams of fat." It has stuck to the same basic ingredients through thick and thin, and it packages healthier options as small choices rather big sacrifices: pile on the peppers and pickles, hold the mayo, vary the bread. Unlike McDonald's and Taco Bell—which abandoned the McLean Deluxe burger and the Border Lights menu in the early '90s—Subway successfully taught us that we could like healthy fast food.
Subway's menu does not promise organic salvation—the closest it has ever come to fruit is the Fruizle smoothie; for dessert, there are cookies rather than, say, apples—but for the most part the sub menu adds up to many fewer calories and a fraction of the fat of the burger-and-fries alternative. And by not requiring a lifestyle transformation, the scaled-down hero can encourage even the least health-food minded to take steps in the right direction, with unexpected results—as evidenced by twentysomething Jared Fogel, a former 425-pound fatso, who, in 2000, became the franchise's poster boy. After a year of eating only Subway's lowest-fat sandwiches instead of his usual mega-Mac diet, Fogel had lost 245 pounds—and it had felt "a little like feasting," he said, "rather than totally depriving myself."
Nutrition activists, understandably enough, may be alarmed by the spread of corporate logos in public schools (according to Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, the American School Food Service Association estimates that nearly a third of public high schools serve "branded fast food," from Taco Bell to Pizza Hut). But schools don't have to buy the Subway trademark to learn from the Subway strategy. With 28 franchises actually on school grounds so far, and a thousand delivery contracts, Subway has proved a big hit with administrators desperate, as Schlosser reports, to have "kids ... think school lunch is a cool thing, the cafeteria a cool place, that we're 'with it,' that we're not institutional." In the Northwest Independent School District near Fort Worth, Texas, the new Subway franchise whips ups batches of three different subs before each of three lunch periods—there's no time for custom-made fare. And the students flock to it. Without much trouble, the lunch ladies who now dish up soggy greens and mystery meat could be handing out fresh baked bread, recognizable cold cuts, and veggie toppings that plenty of teens—even the trendsetters—would happily eat. After all, Saturday Night Live and Letterman have already made Jared "the Subway guy" a nebishy celebrity for an age of irony—a pragmatist rather than a purist in the realm of appetite, the kind of proselytizer a kid can stomach.Ann Hulbert is the author of Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children.Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2078416/
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Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Monday, February 19, 2007
Arkansas May Drop Schoolchildren Weigh-Ins
Ark. May Drop Schoolchildren Weigh-Ins
By ANDREW DeMILLOThe Associated PressMonday, February 5, 2007; 7:03 PM
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Arkansas _ the first state to send home obesity report cards to warn parents of overweight kids' health risks _ may ditch the plan or weaken it with the help of the new governor.
Gov. Mike Beebe said the school weigh-ins and report cards had "a lot of negative, unintended consequences" and hurt some children's self-esteem. He favors letting parents drop out of the program more easily and wants the state to test children less often.
His predecessor, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, said reversing the state's trendsetting, 3-year-old effort, "would be a huge step backwards."
It's worth noting that Beebe, a Democrat, has no weight problem. Huckabee, a Republican, used to weigh 280 pounds, and before he began campaigning for president he campaigned against the ills of obesity.
Since Arkansas adopted its school-based anti-obesity program, California, Florida and Pennsylvania have launched similar efforts. And public health officials in Arkansas point to a slight drop in the state's childhood obesity rate since the program got going.
But some lawmakers say that telling parents their children weigh too much could hurt children's self-esteem. Some also question whether it's the role of schools to monitor students' weight or if it even makes a difference.
Supporters of the current program, like Dr. Karen Young at Arkansas Children's Hospital, say fat children have self-esteem problems regardless.
"The kids who are overweight are already being teased," said Young, who directs a pediatric fitness clinic. "These poor children, they're suffering. It doesn't take the letter for them to suffer."
Young has gained a number of new young patients trying to lose weight since schools began requiring the BMI reports.
Arkansas' program began in 2004 after the Legislature directed public schools to weigh and measure children, calculating their body-mass index (BMI), a number used to determine whether their weight is appropriate for their age.
Huckabee championed the program as he dropped 110 pounds after being diagnosed with diabetes. Beebe, who took office Jan. 9, wants Arkansas to test children less often and make it easier to let parents opt out.
"There are a lot of things schools should be doing, but there are a lot of things parents should be doing and one of them is trying to make sure their kids stay healthy," Beebe said.
The Arkansas House last week approved a bill that would repeal the BMI report cards altogether, horrifying health experts who see the program as a wake-up call for families.
"It's spurring some major action on the part of parents," Young said. "Some of them really don't know their child is overweight until they get the letter."
Danita Thomas of Hope said she didn't need a report from school to know her teenage son Irie was too heavy. But since getting that first BMI report two years ago, Irie has lost nearly 100 pounds and sworn off junk food and sugary sodas _ once staples of his unhealthy diet.
"It was helpful, but I already knew it," Danita Thomas said. "It made me realize that we needed to do some things different."
The 17-year-old now regularly goes to Young's clinic to help him with his weight loss.
Rep. Keven Anderson, R-Rogers, who filed the proposal to eliminate the BMI test altogether, said he didn't believe the BMI reports were effective tools.
"At some point, the parent has got to take some responsibility for the health of their children," Anderson said. "I don't think sending a report home saying you're in or out of the range is going to make a difference."
However, doctors from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have told lawmakers that the BMI reports and other steps, such as limits on vending machine use, were leading to healthier students.
Last year, a study showed that the percentage of Arkansas children who were overweight or at risk of becoming overweight was 37.5 percent, down from 38.1 percent in 2004. University figures from a later study showed that 68 percent of parents and 85 percent of students said they were comfortable with the reports.
That survey also found that the percentage of students reporting being teased because of their weight was 6 percent, half what it was two years earlier.
Young said that 13 percent of the children who come to her fitness clinic do so after getting the obesity report cards from school.
Jim Raczynski, dean of UAMS, opposes weakening the law, saying 20 percent of students already are opting out of the weigh-in program.
"No one's forcing children to stand on the scales, no one's holding them down and I can't imagine any school forcing students or their parents to undergo the BMI assessments if they aren't willing to do it," Raczynski said.
___
On the Net:
Body-mass-index calculator: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/
© 2007 The Associated Press
By ANDREW DeMILLOThe Associated PressMonday, February 5, 2007; 7:03 PM
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Arkansas _ the first state to send home obesity report cards to warn parents of overweight kids' health risks _ may ditch the plan or weaken it with the help of the new governor.
Gov. Mike Beebe said the school weigh-ins and report cards had "a lot of negative, unintended consequences" and hurt some children's self-esteem. He favors letting parents drop out of the program more easily and wants the state to test children less often.
His predecessor, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, said reversing the state's trendsetting, 3-year-old effort, "would be a huge step backwards."
It's worth noting that Beebe, a Democrat, has no weight problem. Huckabee, a Republican, used to weigh 280 pounds, and before he began campaigning for president he campaigned against the ills of obesity.
Since Arkansas adopted its school-based anti-obesity program, California, Florida and Pennsylvania have launched similar efforts. And public health officials in Arkansas point to a slight drop in the state's childhood obesity rate since the program got going.
But some lawmakers say that telling parents their children weigh too much could hurt children's self-esteem. Some also question whether it's the role of schools to monitor students' weight or if it even makes a difference.
Supporters of the current program, like Dr. Karen Young at Arkansas Children's Hospital, say fat children have self-esteem problems regardless.
"The kids who are overweight are already being teased," said Young, who directs a pediatric fitness clinic. "These poor children, they're suffering. It doesn't take the letter for them to suffer."
Young has gained a number of new young patients trying to lose weight since schools began requiring the BMI reports.
Arkansas' program began in 2004 after the Legislature directed public schools to weigh and measure children, calculating their body-mass index (BMI), a number used to determine whether their weight is appropriate for their age.
Huckabee championed the program as he dropped 110 pounds after being diagnosed with diabetes. Beebe, who took office Jan. 9, wants Arkansas to test children less often and make it easier to let parents opt out.
"There are a lot of things schools should be doing, but there are a lot of things parents should be doing and one of them is trying to make sure their kids stay healthy," Beebe said.
The Arkansas House last week approved a bill that would repeal the BMI report cards altogether, horrifying health experts who see the program as a wake-up call for families.
"It's spurring some major action on the part of parents," Young said. "Some of them really don't know their child is overweight until they get the letter."
Danita Thomas of Hope said she didn't need a report from school to know her teenage son Irie was too heavy. But since getting that first BMI report two years ago, Irie has lost nearly 100 pounds and sworn off junk food and sugary sodas _ once staples of his unhealthy diet.
"It was helpful, but I already knew it," Danita Thomas said. "It made me realize that we needed to do some things different."
The 17-year-old now regularly goes to Young's clinic to help him with his weight loss.
Rep. Keven Anderson, R-Rogers, who filed the proposal to eliminate the BMI test altogether, said he didn't believe the BMI reports were effective tools.
"At some point, the parent has got to take some responsibility for the health of their children," Anderson said. "I don't think sending a report home saying you're in or out of the range is going to make a difference."
However, doctors from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have told lawmakers that the BMI reports and other steps, such as limits on vending machine use, were leading to healthier students.
Last year, a study showed that the percentage of Arkansas children who were overweight or at risk of becoming overweight was 37.5 percent, down from 38.1 percent in 2004. University figures from a later study showed that 68 percent of parents and 85 percent of students said they were comfortable with the reports.
That survey also found that the percentage of students reporting being teased because of their weight was 6 percent, half what it was two years earlier.
Young said that 13 percent of the children who come to her fitness clinic do so after getting the obesity report cards from school.
Jim Raczynski, dean of UAMS, opposes weakening the law, saying 20 percent of students already are opting out of the weigh-in program.
"No one's forcing children to stand on the scales, no one's holding them down and I can't imagine any school forcing students or their parents to undergo the BMI assessments if they aren't willing to do it," Raczynski said.
___
On the Net:
Body-mass-index calculator: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/
© 2007 The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
As Obesity Fight Hits Cafeteria, Many Fear a Note From School
New York Times
January 8, 2007
As Obesity Fight Hits Cafeteria, Many Fear a Note From School
By JODI KANTOR
Six-year-old Karlind Dunbar barely touched her dinner, but not for time-honored 6-year-old reasons. The pasta was not the wrong shape. She did not have an urgent date with her dolls.
The problem was the letter Karlind discovered, tucked inside her report card, saying that she had a body mass index in the 80th percentile. The first grader did not know what ''index'' or ''percentile'' meant, or that children scoring in the 5th through 85th percentiles are considered normal, while those scoring higher are at risk of being or already overweight.
Yet she became convinced that her teachers were chastising her for overeating.
Since the letter arrived, ''my 2-year-old eats more than she does,'' said Georgeanna Dunbar, Karlind's mother, who complained to the school and is trying to help her confused child. ''She's afraid she's going to get in trouble,'' Ms. Dunbar said.
The practice of reporting students' body mass scores to parents originated a few years ago as just one tactic in a war on childhood obesity that would be fought with fresh, low-fat cafeteria offerings and expanded physical education. Now, inspired by impressive results in a few well-financed programs, states including Delaware, South Carolina and Tennessee have jumped on the B.M.I. bandwagon, turning the reports -- in casual parlance, obesity report cards -- into a new rite of childhood.
Legislators in other states, including New York, have proposed them as well, while some individual school districts have adopted the practice.
Here, in the rural Southern Tioga School District, the schools distribute the state-mandated reports even as they continue to serve funnel cakes and pizza for breakfast. Some students have physical education for only half the school year, even though 34 percent of kindergartners were overweight or at risk for it, according to 2003-4 reports.
Even health authorities who support distributing students' scores worry about these inconsistent messages, saying they could result in eating disorders and social stigma, misinterpretation of numbers that experts say are confusing, and a sense of helplessness about high scores.
''It would be the height of irony if we successfully identified overweight kids through B.M.I. screening and notification while continuing to feed them atrocious quality meals and snacks, with limited if any opportunities for phys ed in school,'' said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston.
The farmers and foundry workers here in north-central Pennsylvania have different ideas about weight than those of the medical authorities who set the standards (the percentiles are based on pre-1980 measurements because the current population of children is too heavy to use as a reference). Here, the local pizza chain is called Pudgie's. Nearby Mansfield's fanciest restaurant serves its grilled chicken salad piled with fries.
Nearly 60 percent of eighth graders in the district scored in the 85th percentile or higher in 2003-4; more than a quarter had scores in the 95th percentile or higher, meaning they were officially overweight.
As it is for adults, the body mass index for children is a ratio of height to weight, but the juvenile numbers are also classified by age and sex, and the word ''obese'' is not used.
Holly Berguson, the homecoming queen at North Penn Junior-Senior High School here, wears a size 20, a fact cited by her many admirers as proof of this community's generous attitude toward weight, its proud indifference to the ''Baywatch'' bodies on television.
''I don't care how big I am,'' said Holly, 17, who is insulin resistant, a condition that often precedes Type 2 diabetes. ''It's not what you look like, it's who you are.''
Part of the rationale behind the reports is that they are an extension of the height and weight checks that schools have traditionally conducted.
But here, the letters sent home with report cards have been a shock. Many parents threw them out, outraged to be told how much their children should weigh or unconvinced that children who look just fine by local standards are too large by official ones. Seventh graders traded scores during lunch periods. And more than a few children, like Karlind, no longer wanted to eat, students and parents said.
This year, Pennsylvania requires body mass index notification for students in kindergarten through eighth grades. Holly will graduate before it is required at the high school next fall. Her confidence about her body -- she is a lifeguard and wears a bathing suit without embarrassment -- says something about how the perception of childhood obesity has changed from earlier generations.
Among children, teasing and weight have always gone together, but now, says Doris Sargent, principal of Mansfield's elementary school, there are so many overweight children that ''you can't pick on everybody.'' Here, two kinds of children are teased about their weight: the hugely fat and the thin.
Children who are merely big ''pick on skinnier kids because they don't like their own weight,'' said Cassie Allen, a wiry ninth grader at Mansfield Junior-Senior High School who has been taunted as anorexic, as she and her friends sat over a lunch of brown-edged iceberg lettuce piled with artificial bacon bits and neat discs of chicken parmesan in the cafeteria.
A few miles away, at North Penn Junior-Senior High School, a cluster of bleary-eyed girls gathered before the start of classes, complaining that the letters chided them for a situation they were helpless to fix.
''It would be different if we had something to do rather than eat,'' said one, Shauna Gerow.
On a recent school trip to New York, the girls felt like visitors from a different, chubbier planet, they said.
''They're all this big,'' said Cassie Chase, holding her arms close together, ''and we're all this big,'' she said, flinging them wide open.
The letters made some recipients feel the same way but left them unsure what to do about it.
Karen Sick, food services director for the school district, has been phasing in healthier foods despite budgetary obstacles and students who prefer white bread over whole wheat. The school district has revamped its menus, eliminating Gatorade and the powdered sugar from the funnel cakes. But it still sends a nutritionally mixed message: birthday cupcakes are discouraged while cafeterias sell ice cream sandwiches and Rice Krispie treats, which some students buy five at a time.
The district's cafeterias recently introduced kiwi and field greens, which drew enthusiastic reviews, but because of the high cost, they are now back to canned fruit and iceberg lettuce. Officials, while trying hard to address the concerns, acknowledge that change may take several more years.
Along the same lines, all students receive some form of physical education each year. But some students live 45 minutes from school: by the time they get home, it is too dark and cold to play outside. And the administrators point out that many children with weight problems also need tutoring after school, so they have to choose between extra help and team sports.
School administrators here say they do not have the resources of their counterparts in Arkansas, which slowed the rate of increase of its childhood obesity using money drawn from a state tobacco settlement windfall.
Nor can they afford exotic gym fare like the Pilates and kayaking now offered in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where high school students who had scores in the 95th percentile and above have lost an average of eightpounds a semester.
To successfully change students' eating habits, schools would need to counsel each child and provide ''really high-quality nutrition and physical activity assessments,'' said Marlene Schwartz, director of research and school programs at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. ''How often are they eating fruits and vegetables? How much soda are they drinking?''
Christina Bové is the mother of three children who attend the Blossburg schools. She clutched a picture of her 9-year-old son, Christian, in a bathing suit, to prove that he was not ''at risk of overweight,'' as his 92nd percentile score had indicated.
The letter was inaccurate -- and useless, Ms. Bové said. ''The school provides us with this information with no education about how to use it or what it means,'' she said.
Ms. Bové is more worried about her daughter Alora, age 8, who has lately taken up carrot sticks and constant weigh-ins. ''She walks out of the bathroom saying, 'I weigh 68 pounds, and none of you can say that,' '' Ms. Bové said.
For the kind of young woman who counts every kernel of no-butter popcorn, the index reports can be dangerous, some experts said.
''A letter from school feels evaluative,'' said Kelly M. Vitousek, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii and a specialist in eating disorders. Declaring a weight healthy ''without knowing the background of how the kid got there, you're affirming kids who have actively done something to suppress weight,'' she said.
The practice of reporting body mass index scores in schools has gone from pilot program to mass weigh-in despite ''no solid research'' on either its physical or psychological impact, and ''no controlled randomized trial,'' said Ms. Schwartz of Yale. ''Entire states are adopting a policy that has not been tested.''
Individual school districts like Miami's and New York City's are issuing personalized fitness reports for students that list their abdominal crunches and the pace of their one-mile runs along with their body mass index scores.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected soon to issue a policy statement on the reports, providing guidelines about their benefits and risks, an agency spokesperson said. Meanwhile, supporters of the reports said that some of the problems experienced here -- shocked parents, uncomfortable revelations -- are precisely the point.
''If families had an accurate perception of the issue, we wouldn't need B.M.I. screening,'' said Dr. Ludwig of Children's Hospital Boston. ''There are so many overweight children that perceptions are getting distorted about what's normal and healthy.''
While the body mass index is not a perfect test, Dr. Ludwig said it is an effective, low-cost screening tool. He cited a 2005 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that suggested the current generation of children might have shorter life expectancies than their parents.
''The consequences of childhood obesity,'' he said, ''are too great to ignore.''
January 8, 2007
As Obesity Fight Hits Cafeteria, Many Fear a Note From School
By JODI KANTOR
Six-year-old Karlind Dunbar barely touched her dinner, but not for time-honored 6-year-old reasons. The pasta was not the wrong shape. She did not have an urgent date with her dolls.
The problem was the letter Karlind discovered, tucked inside her report card, saying that she had a body mass index in the 80th percentile. The first grader did not know what ''index'' or ''percentile'' meant, or that children scoring in the 5th through 85th percentiles are considered normal, while those scoring higher are at risk of being or already overweight.
Yet she became convinced that her teachers were chastising her for overeating.
Since the letter arrived, ''my 2-year-old eats more than she does,'' said Georgeanna Dunbar, Karlind's mother, who complained to the school and is trying to help her confused child. ''She's afraid she's going to get in trouble,'' Ms. Dunbar said.
The practice of reporting students' body mass scores to parents originated a few years ago as just one tactic in a war on childhood obesity that would be fought with fresh, low-fat cafeteria offerings and expanded physical education. Now, inspired by impressive results in a few well-financed programs, states including Delaware, South Carolina and Tennessee have jumped on the B.M.I. bandwagon, turning the reports -- in casual parlance, obesity report cards -- into a new rite of childhood.
Legislators in other states, including New York, have proposed them as well, while some individual school districts have adopted the practice.
Here, in the rural Southern Tioga School District, the schools distribute the state-mandated reports even as they continue to serve funnel cakes and pizza for breakfast. Some students have physical education for only half the school year, even though 34 percent of kindergartners were overweight or at risk for it, according to 2003-4 reports.
Even health authorities who support distributing students' scores worry about these inconsistent messages, saying they could result in eating disorders and social stigma, misinterpretation of numbers that experts say are confusing, and a sense of helplessness about high scores.
''It would be the height of irony if we successfully identified overweight kids through B.M.I. screening and notification while continuing to feed them atrocious quality meals and snacks, with limited if any opportunities for phys ed in school,'' said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston.
The farmers and foundry workers here in north-central Pennsylvania have different ideas about weight than those of the medical authorities who set the standards (the percentiles are based on pre-1980 measurements because the current population of children is too heavy to use as a reference). Here, the local pizza chain is called Pudgie's. Nearby Mansfield's fanciest restaurant serves its grilled chicken salad piled with fries.
Nearly 60 percent of eighth graders in the district scored in the 85th percentile or higher in 2003-4; more than a quarter had scores in the 95th percentile or higher, meaning they were officially overweight.
As it is for adults, the body mass index for children is a ratio of height to weight, but the juvenile numbers are also classified by age and sex, and the word ''obese'' is not used.
Holly Berguson, the homecoming queen at North Penn Junior-Senior High School here, wears a size 20, a fact cited by her many admirers as proof of this community's generous attitude toward weight, its proud indifference to the ''Baywatch'' bodies on television.
''I don't care how big I am,'' said Holly, 17, who is insulin resistant, a condition that often precedes Type 2 diabetes. ''It's not what you look like, it's who you are.''
Part of the rationale behind the reports is that they are an extension of the height and weight checks that schools have traditionally conducted.
But here, the letters sent home with report cards have been a shock. Many parents threw them out, outraged to be told how much their children should weigh or unconvinced that children who look just fine by local standards are too large by official ones. Seventh graders traded scores during lunch periods. And more than a few children, like Karlind, no longer wanted to eat, students and parents said.
This year, Pennsylvania requires body mass index notification for students in kindergarten through eighth grades. Holly will graduate before it is required at the high school next fall. Her confidence about her body -- she is a lifeguard and wears a bathing suit without embarrassment -- says something about how the perception of childhood obesity has changed from earlier generations.
Among children, teasing and weight have always gone together, but now, says Doris Sargent, principal of Mansfield's elementary school, there are so many overweight children that ''you can't pick on everybody.'' Here, two kinds of children are teased about their weight: the hugely fat and the thin.
Children who are merely big ''pick on skinnier kids because they don't like their own weight,'' said Cassie Allen, a wiry ninth grader at Mansfield Junior-Senior High School who has been taunted as anorexic, as she and her friends sat over a lunch of brown-edged iceberg lettuce piled with artificial bacon bits and neat discs of chicken parmesan in the cafeteria.
A few miles away, at North Penn Junior-Senior High School, a cluster of bleary-eyed girls gathered before the start of classes, complaining that the letters chided them for a situation they were helpless to fix.
''It would be different if we had something to do rather than eat,'' said one, Shauna Gerow.
On a recent school trip to New York, the girls felt like visitors from a different, chubbier planet, they said.
''They're all this big,'' said Cassie Chase, holding her arms close together, ''and we're all this big,'' she said, flinging them wide open.
The letters made some recipients feel the same way but left them unsure what to do about it.
Karen Sick, food services director for the school district, has been phasing in healthier foods despite budgetary obstacles and students who prefer white bread over whole wheat. The school district has revamped its menus, eliminating Gatorade and the powdered sugar from the funnel cakes. But it still sends a nutritionally mixed message: birthday cupcakes are discouraged while cafeterias sell ice cream sandwiches and Rice Krispie treats, which some students buy five at a time.
The district's cafeterias recently introduced kiwi and field greens, which drew enthusiastic reviews, but because of the high cost, they are now back to canned fruit and iceberg lettuce. Officials, while trying hard to address the concerns, acknowledge that change may take several more years.
Along the same lines, all students receive some form of physical education each year. But some students live 45 minutes from school: by the time they get home, it is too dark and cold to play outside. And the administrators point out that many children with weight problems also need tutoring after school, so they have to choose between extra help and team sports.
School administrators here say they do not have the resources of their counterparts in Arkansas, which slowed the rate of increase of its childhood obesity using money drawn from a state tobacco settlement windfall.
Nor can they afford exotic gym fare like the Pilates and kayaking now offered in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where high school students who had scores in the 95th percentile and above have lost an average of eightpounds a semester.
To successfully change students' eating habits, schools would need to counsel each child and provide ''really high-quality nutrition and physical activity assessments,'' said Marlene Schwartz, director of research and school programs at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. ''How often are they eating fruits and vegetables? How much soda are they drinking?''
Christina Bové is the mother of three children who attend the Blossburg schools. She clutched a picture of her 9-year-old son, Christian, in a bathing suit, to prove that he was not ''at risk of overweight,'' as his 92nd percentile score had indicated.
The letter was inaccurate -- and useless, Ms. Bové said. ''The school provides us with this information with no education about how to use it or what it means,'' she said.
Ms. Bové is more worried about her daughter Alora, age 8, who has lately taken up carrot sticks and constant weigh-ins. ''She walks out of the bathroom saying, 'I weigh 68 pounds, and none of you can say that,' '' Ms. Bové said.
For the kind of young woman who counts every kernel of no-butter popcorn, the index reports can be dangerous, some experts said.
''A letter from school feels evaluative,'' said Kelly M. Vitousek, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii and a specialist in eating disorders. Declaring a weight healthy ''without knowing the background of how the kid got there, you're affirming kids who have actively done something to suppress weight,'' she said.
The practice of reporting body mass index scores in schools has gone from pilot program to mass weigh-in despite ''no solid research'' on either its physical or psychological impact, and ''no controlled randomized trial,'' said Ms. Schwartz of Yale. ''Entire states are adopting a policy that has not been tested.''
Individual school districts like Miami's and New York City's are issuing personalized fitness reports for students that list their abdominal crunches and the pace of their one-mile runs along with their body mass index scores.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected soon to issue a policy statement on the reports, providing guidelines about their benefits and risks, an agency spokesperson said. Meanwhile, supporters of the reports said that some of the problems experienced here -- shocked parents, uncomfortable revelations -- are precisely the point.
''If families had an accurate perception of the issue, we wouldn't need B.M.I. screening,'' said Dr. Ludwig of Children's Hospital Boston. ''There are so many overweight children that perceptions are getting distorted about what's normal and healthy.''
While the body mass index is not a perfect test, Dr. Ludwig said it is an effective, low-cost screening tool. He cited a 2005 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that suggested the current generation of children might have shorter life expectancies than their parents.
''The consequences of childhood obesity,'' he said, ''are too great to ignore.''
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