WBEZ | childhood obesity

Michelle Obama to Chicago kids: 'I am you'

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:00:00 -0600

Imagine students learning their ABCs while dancing, or memorizing multiplication tables while doing jumping jacks.

Some schools are using both methods of instruction, and Michelle Obama would like to see more of them use other creative ways to help students get the recommended hour of daily exercise.

In Chicago Thursday, the first lady announced a new public-private partnership to help schools do just that. "Let's Move Active Schools" starts with a website, www.letsmoveschools.org , where school officials and others can sign up to get started.

Mrs. Obama said too many penny-pinched schools have either cut spending on physical education or eliminated it outright to put the money toward classroom instruction. But the first lady who starts most days with a workout — and other advocates of helping today's largely sedentary kids move their bodies — say that's a false choice, since studies that show exercise helps youngsters focus and do well in school.

The effort is one of the newest parts of Mrs. Obama's 3-year-old campaign against childhood obesity, known as "Let's Move," which she has spent the week promoting.

"With each passing year, schools feel like it's just getting harder to find the time, the money and the will to help our kids be active. But just because it's hard doesn't mean we should stop trying," the first lady said. "It means we should try harder. It means that all of us — not just educators, but businesses and nonprofits and ordinary citizens — we all need to dig a little deeper, start getting more creative."

She was joined at McCormick Place in her hometown by several Olympians, including gymnasts Dominique Dawes and Gabby Douglas, sprinter Allyson Felix, tennis player Serena Williams and decathlete Ashton Eaton, along with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and triathlete Sarah Reinertsen, whose left leg was amputated above the knee when she was a child, and other athletes. Thousands of students from city middle schools also were being brought in for the event.

Research shows that daily exercise has a positive influence on academic performance, but kids today spend too much time sitting, mostly in school but also outside the classroom while watching TV, playing video games or surfing the Internet. Federal guidelines recommend that children ages 6-17 get at least 60 minutes of exercise daily, which can be racked up through multiple spurts of activity throughout the day.

The White House says the most current data, from 2007, shows that just 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle schools and 2 percent of high schools provided daily physical education.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he's proof of the link between exercise and academic performance. As a boy, he said, he had a hard time sitting still in class but that exercise helped him focus.

"What's true for me is true for many of our nation's children," he said in an interview.

Duncan, who played basketball professionally in Australia, said the choice is not between physical activity or academics, especially with about one-third of U.S. kids either overweight or obese and at higher risk for life-threatening illnesses like heart disease or diabetes.

"It's got to be both," he said. Duncan cited the examples of students learning the alphabet while dancing or memorizing multiplication tables while doing jumping jacks.

Mrs. Obama called on school staff, families and communities to help get 50,000 schools, about half the number of public schools in the U.S., involved in the program over the next five years.

The President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation will oversee the program. Funding and other resources will come from Nike Inc., the GENYOUth Foundation, ChildObesity180, Kaiser Permanente and the General Mills Foundation.

Under the new initiative, modest grants will be available from the Education Department to help some programs get started. The GENYOUth Foundation and ChildObesity180 also will be awarding grants.

Nike has committed $50 million to the effort over the next five years; the remaining groups together have pledged more than $20 million.

Williams said it's important to structure the activity so that it doesn't feel like a workout.

"I had fun and I didn't realize it was work," she said about her years of practice before becoming one of America's top tennis players.

Coalition recommends first-ever nutrition and exercise standards for after school programs

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:00:00 -0500

A coalition of groups, including the Chicago-based national YMCA, has issued the first-ever comprehensive national nutritonal and physical activity guidelines for camps and after school programs.

The standards were issued Tuesday by the Healthy Out-of-School Time Coalition and coordinated by the YMCA, the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College.

They include a common sense-approach including serving fruits and vegetables instead of more sugary, fatty treats; and offering water rather than juices or soda. Half-day programs should offer at least half an hour of physical activity; full-day programs should offer at least an hour.

“Energy balance and appropriate physical activity are critical to good health and preventing childhood obesity, which is reaching record numbers in this country,” says project co-leader Ellen S. Gannett, director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time. “If out-of-school programs can influence smart choices for children when they’re away from home and out of the classroom, they will be an important component in the campaign to fight childhood obesity.”

The new standards have already been adopted by the National Afterschool Association (NAA), and local YMCA's will begin the process of adopting the standards this year.

According to the coalition, more than eight million children nationwide participate in out-of-school programs for at least three hours a day.

Junk food near schools may be trivial factor for kids' weight

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:58:00 -0500

You may think that having lots of stores and restaurants selling unhealthful food right next to high schools would be one of the reasons children are getting fatter.

But you might be wrong. Researchers in Maine have found something contrary to that conventional wisdom: Junk food sold near high schools does not seem to affect students' body mass index, or BMI.

"Soda — and fast food as well — is so ubiquitous in these kids' lives that having one more or one less venue where they can be purchased near the schools doesn't seem to make any bit of difference," says lead author of the study David E. Harris, a researcher at the University of Southern Maine. "If there's soda in the fridge at home, whether you can buy it near the school doesn't seem to make a difference."

Students from 11 Maine high schools answered questionnaires about their height, weight and junk food consumption — 552 students in all.

Researchers found that half of the students drank soda at least once a week and more than 10 percent drank it each day. Also, about two-thirds had visited a fast food restaurant selling burgers in the previous month. In the study, 12.5 percent of those surveyed were obese. According to the 2007-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 16.9 percent of children and adolescents are obese.

Researchers also collected data on food stores and restaurants that sold unhealthful food within a 2-kilometer radius of each school. But when they compared the data, the number and proximity of junk food stores didn't seem to impact the kids' BMI. The results of the study appear in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

However, Michael Goran, director of the Childhood Obesity Research Center at University of Southern California, doesn't think the research has much significance. He notes that the study population was small, the environment is unique, and students were reporting their own weight and height, which could skew the results. "I don't put very much weight behind this study," Goren says.

The authors do acknowledge these limitations in their research.

But Goran agrees with the researchers on one point: Obesity can't be boiled down to just one factor. "It's all about individual choices," he says. "But, the more that we swim in an obesity-promoting environment, the harder it is to make those choices."