New Study Links Childhood Obesity To School Lunches

What do you think of when someone mentions school lunches? The first word that comes to my mind is...Yuck.

But the truth is, school lunches have been linked to childhood obesity, and childhood obesity is the reason we are seeing an increase in children developing Type 2 Diabetes. It seems obvious that we need to start serving healthy lunches in our schools, and a new study shows that making these nutritional changes does have a positive affect.

Among the 1,349 students Foster's team followed from fourth to sixth grade. As mentioned, there was about a 50 percent reduction in the incidence (new cases) of overweight at the end of 2 years among the children attending the program schools, while no changes were seen among the children attending the schools without a program.

From Fat Fighter TV

This is just the kind of story I like to hear - some Philadelphia elementary schools made changes to fight fat… and they won big! It was all part of a government-funded study to if a few healthy tweaks could reduce the number of overweight kids.

Ten Philadelphia schools were in this study. Half of them made healthy changes to their vending machines, cafeterias, and classrooms. The report focused on 4th, 5th, and 6th graders - about 40 percent of them were overweight or obese when the study started in 2002. Here are some of the changes the five elementary schools made:

• Replaced sodas with fruit juice, water, and low-fat milk
• Snacks had to be low in salt, fat, and sugar
• Got rid of candy
• During recess, students were urged to exercise at activity stations

From Big Tea Party...

“We found when you give children healthy choices, they pick them,” said Grace McGinley, school nurse at Francis Hopkinson School, one of the test schools.

Staff and students had lessons on good nutrition. The message was reinforced in other subjects: Food labels were used to help teach fractions. And parents were also enlisted: A fundraiser successfully substituted fruit salad for baked goods, said another of the researchers, Sandy Sherman, the Food Trust’s director of nutrition education.

She said the children were also urged to exercise at activity stations during recess. They were measured and weighed periodically and surveyed about food and exercise.

From Strollerderby...

A recent study conducted in Philadelphia schools found that eliminating soda, rethinking snacks and educating kids almost halves the number of kids who are obese by the sixth grade.

Color me stunned. Turns out that when you give kids information and stop easy access to corn syrup and salt, you can actually make a difference. Butter my butt and call me a biscuit. It's a miracle.

I hope this study will be an incentive for schools to begin to make nutritional changes in their lunch programs. Because when children learn how to make healthy food choices early on in their life, they are more likely to develop healthy eating habits as adults.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan CatherineBlogs, The Political Voices of Women, Care2 Election Blog