Report Probes Childhood Obesity
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 -When it comes to food and drink, today’s kids have a range of options. Soda comes in brown, green, purple and blue. Ketchup does too. And fruit snacks appear as bears, ducks, baseball players, and pop music stars. The world is at our children’s fingertips. Yet this is precisely the problem, according to a report released Thursday by the Prevention of Obesity in Children and Youth Committee.
As the food and beverage industries are making fat and sugar ever more appealing, the growing presence of vending machines in school hallways becomes a greater problem, the report said.
The committee, a part of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, wants to make sure that provisions are in place to encourage healthier choices-and limit the availability of the commercial goodies that often crowd the school’s vending machines.
Jeffrey Koplan, chairman of the 19 member committee, said childhood obesity is still on the rise. Approximately 9 million children over the age of 6 are considered obese, they said, and over the past three decades the childhood obesity rate has more than doubled for children 2-5 years old and 12-19 years old. It has more than tripled for children 6-11 years old.
“We must act now and we must do this as a nation,” Koplan said. “Several of our recommendations challenge entrenched aspects of American life and business, but if we are not willing to make some fundamental shifts in our attitudes and actions, obesity’s toll on our nation’s health and well-being will only worsen.”
The report calls for increased federal guidelines for monitoring products available at schools. Currently, while the U.S. Department of Agriculture sets nutritional guidelines for the meals served in the school cafeterias they do not apply to food and drinks sold out of school vending machines. The only limit is that schools are prohibited from allowing vending service during school meal times.
The report noted that while 21 states have developed their own guidelines in this area, a report from the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, found in 2000 that commercial vending foods were sold in 98 percent of secondary schools, 74 percent of middle schools, and 43 percent of elementary schools.
In Massachusetts, where there are no additional conditions, several financial and educational training programs accompany the federal guidelines in order to promote school nutrition.
The Team Nutrition and Training Program promotes public and private partnerships for school nutrition and the School Breakfast and Lunch programs provide federally funded cash reimbursements for participating schools to serve free and reduced price nutritional meals to low-income children.
The New Bedford school district participates in both of these federal meal programs. According to Nancy Carvalho, food service director for the New Bedford Public School System, the breakfast and lunch programs are now an important part of the school day.
“We are what we eat, you know,” Carvalho said. “And we’re trying to get them to eat the meal, rather than go to the snacks.”
While they are not required to do so, Carvalho said her office makes sure that all of the schools vending machines have supplies of healthy snack choices, in addition to some of the more popular treats. In addition, the “soda machines” carry only juice and water.
Sheila Parisien, who is food service director for the Manchester and Essex county school systems and president-elect of the School Nutrition Association of Massachusetts, said that her organization and the Department of Education are working to make these practices a requirement, as was recommended by the Prevention of Obesity committee’s report.
She pointed in particular to work being completed by the Massachusetts Action for Healthy Kids, which is a coalition of leaders from her organization and the Department of Education, along with other state health and education groups.
In addition to drafting its own set of guidelines for vending service items and procedures, the coalition has launched a “Get local, buy fresh” campaign to promote healthy and local food choices in schools statewide. It also has announced six $1,000 grants that will be awarded to high school student groups that work with their school’s administration to bring in healthier food plans.
“We feed kids sometimes two times a day, so we have a big responsibility to them,” Parisien explained. As a food service director herself, she said, “We are not the problem, but we are a big part of the solution.”
Cathy Liverman, study director and senior program officer for the Institute of Medicine, said this is the attitude her group hopes to propagate with the report. The group will be briefing several congressional committees on their findings, including a hearing scheduled with Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., for next week.
“We just hope that this spurs a lot of work from here on,” she said. “This will give people a lot of validity and solid research, in order to move forward.”
