Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for June 6, 2006 SHUT UP AND EAT...

...and then go to your room and watch the @#$% health video!

First, a "study" for folks that will study anything, from the Los Angeles Daily News...

Strict moms raising fat kids

BY CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
LA Daily News

CHICAGO - "Clean your plate or else!" and other authoritarian approaches to parenting can lead to overweight children, a new study finds.

Strict mothers were nearly five times more likely to raise tubby first-graders than mothers who treated their children with flexibility and respect while also setting clear rules.

But while the children of flexible rule-setting moms avoided obesity, the children of neglectful mothers and permissive mothers were twice as likely to get fat.

"The difference between the different parenting groups is pretty striking," said the study co-author, Dr. Kay Rhee of Boston University School of Medicine. The study of 872 families appears in the June issue of Pediatrics, released today.

Rhee speculated that parents who show respect and warmth within a framework of rules may help their children learn to make good decisions about food and exercise. Or it could be that strict parents create a stressful household where overeating becomes a comfort and escape, she said.

Other studies have shown the flexible parenting style, also called authoritative, has other good results for children such as higher achievement in school and lower incidence of depression, said John Lavigne, chief psychologist at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Lavigne, who was not involved in the new study, said most parents can learn a different way of handling their children.

"Some parents might have difficulty changing their style. But a lot of other parents are very amenable to change, if they only have the right kind of advice," Lavigne said.

Not enough fathers participated in the study to measure their effects on children's weight, Rhee said. And since more than 80 percent of the study participants were white, the findings may not be applicable to other racial groups, she said.

The study also did not take into account the weight status of the mothers, so the researchers couldn't rule out that a mother's weight might influence both her parenting and her children's weight. However, a previous study showed that parenting style is not linked to weight status, Rhee said.

To determine parenting style for the new study, researchers surveyed the mothers and observed them interacting with their children when the kids were 4 years old. The children's body mass indexes were measured later when the children were in first grade.

Seventeen percent of the children of strict disciplinarians were overweight compared to 9.9 percent of the children of neglectful parents, 9.8 percent of the children of permissive parents and 3.9 percent of the children of flexible rule-setters.

"Children need adults to set some limits and as the child matures they need to learn responsibility and self-regulation gradually," said Dr. Nancy Krebs, co-chairwoman of the task force on obesity for the American Academy of Pediatrics, who also was not involved in the new study.

The researchers studied mothers and children in Little Rock, Ark.; Irvine; Lawrence, Kan.; Boston; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Charlottesville, Va.; Morgantown, N.C.; Seattle, and Madison, Wis.

In homes where parents are firm but flexible, "the rules can be bent a little or modified a little to accommodate the situation. But ultimately there are rules," Rhee said. "You still maintain the rule that the child has to have a vegetable at dinner, but the child gets to pick which one and how much of it they eat."

Next up, using the alleged "cause" to deliver the "cure" from eSchool News...

Schools use videos, internet to engage students and drive home the need for healthy choices

By Cara Erenben, Contributing Editor

Television, the internet, and video games are often cited as reasons so many of America's children are obese. Ironically, several new curriculum programs that use some of the same technologies blamed for contributing to childhood obesity are encouraging the nation's youth to adopt healthier lifestyles.

Awareness about the severity of childhood obesity plaguing the nation's children was heightened by a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study said nearly a third of boys and girls ages 2 to 19 are overweight. The number of overweight boys has increased by 20 percent in the last five years, and the number of overweight children has more than tripled since the mid-1960s.

Interventions have popped up nationwide. For example, at the beginning of May, the bottling industry announced it would stop selling soda in public schools. Through an agreement brokered by former President Bill Clinton and his foundation, the nation's largest beverage distributors--including Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Coca-Cola Co., and PepsiCo Inc.--said they would only sell water, unsweetened juice, and low-fat milk to elementary and middle schools. Diet sodas only would be sold at high schools. The companies reportedly will work to implement the changes at three-fourths of the nation's public schools by the 2008-2009 school year, and at all public schools a year later.

Educators and school leaders across the country also have taken steps to curb childhood obesity by stepping up their health education programs--and many are using technology to better engage kids and get the message across.

Jill Bond, a teacher at Morningside Elementary School in Port St. Lucie, Fla., uses food nutrition education to teach her fourth grade students core curriculum subjects such as math, science, and language arts.

"It's amazing how little these children knew about nutrition," Bond said. With resources gleaned from textbooks, the internet, and Discovery Education's Health Connection, she taught her students math, science, reading, writing, and about food groups, carbohydrates, fats, and more.

For a lesson on grains, she had her students grind whole grains, such as popcorn, wheat berries, and groats, into cornmeal, flour, and oatmeal. Students also kept journals of what grains they ate that week, and they watched a video from Discovery Education Health Connection about how different cultures eat different grains.

Although showing video to students might seem counter-productive, Bond said it engages her students more quickly than she otherwise could.

"Children 'so' need the entertainment, so it's nice to have the multimedia tie-in," Bond said. "These kids are so multimedia-entwined since birth. They've been raised with big-screen TVs, and some of them can text message faster than I can type."

The videos offered by Discovery Education are arranged in short segments. The videos Bond shows are only minutes long, but still, she will pause them to ask questions or to get students to anticipate what is coming up next.

Discovery Education Health Connection is a full health and prevention curriculum program available online. Its content covers nine areas: alcohol and other drugs; the body; growth and development; mental health; nutrition; physical activity; safety; tobacco; and violence.

"It does provide a one-stop-shop for health and prevention content," said Mari Belalcazar, marketing manager for Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications. "Educators can use it as a full curriculum, but they don't have to."

The program includes lessons plans, worksheets, videos, and teacher guides. Each lesson is correlated to state standards, and the lessons are interdisciplinary so teachers can easily incorporate nutrition education into math, science, and language-arts subjects.

"Obesity is not just a nutrition issue; it is not just an exercise issue," said Belalcazar: psychological issues also can come into play. A student who was bullied on the playground might comfort him- or herself with overeating. Discovery Education Health Connection's comprehensive curriculum would address that, she said.

Discovery Education Health Connection costs $1,695 per school building, per year. A new version, which will be available this fall, will have more interactivity and a greater focus on integrating health topics into the core subjects such as math, science, and language arts.

A quest for longevity

One thousand students and 100 teachers from Hopkins North Junior High School in Hopkins, Minn., pledged to make healthier lifestyle choices by taking the Blue Zones Challenge in May.

The Challenge is a web-based intervention program that encourages students and teachers to make healthier choices based on research and guidance gleaned from regions in the world where people have lived the longest.

After a presentation at a school assembly by Dan Buettner, author of National Geographic's November 2005 longevity cover story and leader of Quest Network Inc. interactive expeditions, students at Hopkins were inspired to take the challenge.

Students had to record how much television they watched, how much exercise they did, what fruits and vegetable they ate, and how much soda they drank. At the end of each week, students entered their statistics online. Each week, they tried to do better than the week before. They also could compare their progress with that of other students.

"We thought it was a good way to end the school year and start the summer," Hibbard said, adding that the program really made students aware of what they were consuming--and hopefully the good habits will last throughout the summer.

"Our school district has always been on the cutting edge of promoting healthy eating," said Linda Hibbard, associate principal at Hopkins North Junior High School. For example, the district hired an executive chef to make school lunches more nutritious. The cafeteria now features a grill line and a build-your-own-sandwich station that is filled with farm-fresh ingredients. The district also removed soda machines from its school buildings long ago.

"Students like lunch at Hopkins," Hibbard said. "It's very nutritious and attractively presented."

In October, Blue Zones Expeditions will be leading a quest to Central America to one of the hottest-known spots of longevity yet. Each day for three weeks, participating students will be able to direct a team of explorers as they try to unearth secrets for living a long, healthy life. Like a choose-your-own-adventure story, students will get to vote on logistical, ethical, and content development decisions via the web. Should the explorers interview a restaurant owner, a local centenarian, or a professor?

Nightly, the exploration team will post new video, photographs, and materials on the web site based on the most popular decision made by the students. The curriculum guide shows teachers how to use Blue Zones, whether they have five minutes a day or prefer to integrate the content throughout the day.

The Blue Zones Curriculum, provided by Quest Networks Inc., is free thanks to paid sponsorships. Educators can register to participate at the Blue Zones web site.

Cafeteria nutrition calculator

Georgia's Gwinnett County Public Schools is one of a growing number of school systems across the county that are using the interactivity afforded by the internet to help students and their parents see the nutritional impact of their food choices. The district now offers parents and students access to an online nutrition calculator so they can figure out the nutritional value of foods served in their school cafeterias.

To access the calculator, parents and students must go to the Nutri-Caf￩ web site and choose their district and school from a list, followed by the date of the menu they wish to view.

Immediately, they will enter what looks like a virtual cafeteria, where users can drag and drop pictures of the menu items onto their virtual "tray." Once an item is added to the tray, the nutritional value is tallied.

Not only does the web site calculate the calories, carbohydrates, fat grams, protein, and other nutrients; Nutri-Caf￩ also calculates the price of the lunch. Based on the student's participation in the National School Lunch Program, different calculations appear for paid, free, or reduced-price lunches. When the components of a complete meal have been reached, a star will flash.

"Our hope is that this technology will generate more discussion among students and their parents about meal choices, helping them to better understand the many choices available and the health benefits of their choices," said Lora Novak, interim school nutrition director for Gwinnett County Public Schools.

Links:

Discovery Education Health Connection
http://www.discoveryhealthconnection.com

Blue Zones
http://www.bluezones.com

Nutri-Cafe
http://www.nutri-cafe.com