Making a Change

It is often said that children are more open to change than adults. This is because children have not yet established a strong daily routine, nor have they had habits long enough for them to be deeply embedded in their lifestyle. If schools begin teaching elementary age kids the value of a healthy lifestyle, there is a strong chance of a successful outcome. Children will most likely take what they learned in school home and share it with their family. Because there is no real argument against living a healthy lifestyle, I believe that changing school lunch menus to be healthier, as well as enforcing healthy habits within the school can only have positive benefits.

This is why I am advocating the revision of the Aberdeen, South Dakota elementary school nutrition standards to mandate that student meals meet specific guidelines in fat, sugar and cholesterol content.

School Lunch

This video is a great summary on how to improve your child's lunch diet through a combination of methods. The video mentions the role parents play in the school lunch menu and how simply speaking up can make a difference for the better. Often changes are made from the bottom up, so don’t feel your opinions don’t matter because they do.

In case you aren’t immediately successful in implementing a change in the school’s meals, the video also explains a simple lunch you can make at home for your child to bring to school. Some basic food substitutions can save your child almost 500 calories in one meal, so don’t be afraid to read the nutrition label.

Marketing Food to Children

In 2006, approximately $1,618,600,000 was spent on marketing food and beverages to American children and adolescents. Of this amount, $870 million was spent on targeting just children.

Company’s marketing tactics incorporate the idea of presenting one consistent image, everywhere. A character in a television spot appears on the box in the grocery store, this same character is on posters in restaurants and popping up in ads on the internet. The big idea is to create a friendly face for the brand, most often through the use of a mascot, then place that mascot everywhere children are bound to be. Studies have shown that people are comfortable with what is familiar to them, the same goes for children. If a child sees a friendly, familiar face on a box of cereal, the same face that appeared during commercials during Saturday morning cartoons, they are more likely to want that product.

Marketing tactics such as these would seem more ethical to me if they were promoting healthy foods. Children are so impressionable at a young age that it seems wrong to manipulate them into wanting innutritious foods, especially when they are so young that they have not yet learned what nutrition even is.

I hope to see companies that produce nutritious foods taking a note from the junk food book. If healthy foods are promoted just as often and in the same places as unhealthy foods, children stand a better chance of eating right. If this idea is successful, when a child sees Coco Puffs in the lunch line, they will pass over them for a more nutritious option.

Parent's Roles

Parents play a large role when it comes to what their child eats, especially with young children. It is most often the parents who decide what brand of cereal is placed on the breakfast table in the morning, and whether or not fast food will be on the menu for dinner. Encouraging healthy eating from a young age is the most effective way to instill good eating habits in children, habits that they can then take with them when they’re going through the lunch line at school.

Though it is not right for schools to offer innutritious foods to children, it is not their fault if the child selects an unhealthy meal when provided with a healthy alternative. Establishing an awareness of what makes up a healthy meal at home will provide your child with knowledge that will last them a lifetime. Eventually, if enough students begin selecting only healthy foods in the lunch line, junk food will be discontinued due to lack on interest.

Below are some simple tips from the Weight Control Information Network on how parents can improve their child’s diet.

• Give your child a snack or two in addition to his or her three daily meals.
• Offer your child a wide variety of foods, such as grains, vegetables and fruits, low-fat dairy products, and lean meat or beans.
• Serve snacks like dried fruit, low-fat yogurt, and air-popped popcorn.
• Cook with less fat—bake, roast, or poach foods instead of frying.
• Choose and prepare foods with less salt. Keep the salt shaker off the table. Have fruits and vegetables on hand for snacks instead of salty snack foods.
• Involve your child in planning and preparing meals. Children may be more willing to eat the dishes they help fix.
• Have family meals together and serve everyone the same thing.
• Do not be too strict. In small amounts, sweets or food from fast-food restaurants can still have a place in a healthy diet.
  

South Dakota Health

The following are facts about the population of South Dakota:

• 206,686 children live in South Dakota
• 12% of children are overweight
• 6.7% of adults have diabetes
• 19.8% of the adult population are smokers
• 10.5% of adults have asthma
• 62.8% of adults are overweight or obese
• 47.8% of adults participate in physical activity
• No regulated physical education program or school nutrition program
• No mandating of BMI screening (BMI stands for body mass index, a standard way of determining if individuals are overweight based on age, gender, height and weight)

Just by looking at these few percentages, it is easy to conclude that the state of South Dakota as a whole does put health as their first priority. With 62.8 percent of the adult population overweight or obese, it may be assumed that the parents of children are not setting a good example when it comes to healthy habits.

The government is not helping either. There are no regulations when it comes to physical education and nutrition programs in schools. Where are children supposed to learn about their own health if they aren’t learning it at home, and the government does not require it in school? BMI screenings are also not required, so children are not being told by a professional if they are overweight. If they look to their parents to compare their own weight to, chances are they are looking up at an overweight adult, roughly half of which do not participate in any physical activity.

Implementing a healthier school lunch menu would be a great first step to making South Dakota a healthier state. By being educated in an environment that promotes healthy living, children would be exposed to new, beneficial ideas. After school they could go home and teach their family members about the new lifestyle habits they learned in school, thus creating a clear flow of communication.

Daily Vitamins

Highly processed foods contain little vitamins. Unfortunately, processed foods are almost always present in school meals. Even the vegetables served are normally low in vitamin and mineral content. This is because the techniques farmers use to maximize output and minimize cost are lowering the nutritional value of their produce. As a result, an extra step must be taken in order to keep children healthy, the use of vitamin supplements. Vitamins prove to be an easy way to make sure your child is receiving the recommended amount of vitamins in one, easy step. It is important to not that health problems can develop if your children do not get the recommended amount of vitamins on a regular basis. Lifestyle habits, both good and bad, begin at an early age. Make sure your child’s habits are healthy for them.

In the meantime, push to improve the school lunch menu at your child's school. The more nutritious their foods, the less imperative it is for them to take vitamin supplements.

Nation's Leading Food Manufacturers Assist in Combating Childhood Obesity

On October 6, 2008, The Alliance for a Healthier Generation announced it would be collaborating with: Campbell soup, Dannon, Kraft Foods, Mars and Pepsi to create healthier snacks for child consumption in schools. The new foods offered will be lower in calories and fat, thus giving students a first hand opportunity to actively carry out the nutrition habits they learn in the classroom.

Now that such major companies have publicly addressed the presence of childhood obesity in America as being partially a result of poor nutrition, I hope that other companies will take the step to change their products for the better. Making a company’s food products more nutritious can only have positive results, so why not make the change?

Former President Clinton said in regards to this change, “Ensuring that children have healthier food choices at school is another critical step in the fight against childhood obesity, I'm proud of these five companies for making an important statement about this health challenge and an even more important commitment to doing something about it. What we are setting in motion with these guidelines will dramatically change the kind of food that children have access to at school. It will take time, but through coalitions like this of industry and the non-profit sector, we are going to make a real difference in the lives of millions of children by helping them eat healthier and live healthier.”