Let's Move: Parents Take Action Against Childhood Obesity

Recently the Silicon Valley Moms Group contributors were invited to participate on a call with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss some of the new initiatives being put forth to improve the school lunch programs from a federal level.  This call took place in support of Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative launch today. I was bummed to have missed the call (don't worry - I wasn't TOO bummed, being at Disney World afterall! ;-) )

I had access to the notes of some of the other SVMoms participants and have been reading their posts from the call this morning, and wanted to chime in myself as my perspective hasn't been reflected. The purpose of the call was to educate moms on the current state of school lunches and discuss reauthorizing the Childhood Nutrition Act and increasing school funding for more fresh fruits and vegetables in school lunches. (Which is a TOTAL no-brainer for most moms.) I learned that the U.S. provides lunches to 30 million children a year, and serves breakfast to around 10 million, making school lunches a critical component in the Let's Move initiative to combat childhood obesity. 

I applaud The First Lady's efforts with Let's Move and hope that other parents check out the program and see what aspects they can adapt within their own homes. I'm all for improving the nutrition in our schools, but I get insulted when other parents choose to blame schools for childhood issues like the obesity epidemic. Schools may help to raise our kids, but their primary objective is to educate our kids, so I like that Let's Move aims at parents to help make healthy decisions for their families, and show children by example, how to live a physically active and healthy life.

I'd love it if the government could find a way to improve the food choices offered for school lunches. I'm all for finding a way to increase funding for the Childhood Nutrition Act. However, removing certain foods isn't necessarily the answer. Those same foods and drinks were offered back when I was a child - and obesity wasn't an issue then like it is today. I don't think it's the food that's done this, I think it's how our lifestyles have changed over the last 25 years. As a former athlete, I disagreed with removing Gatorade and soda from schools. If you're an active athlete, working out two to three hours a day after school, by all means, drink up that Gatorade after practice while you wait for your ride home. If you're not physically active, then what were you doing drinking Gatorade which was developed to replenish the nutrients and electrolytes of athletes?

For me, it really comes down to societal norms. I'm educated, live in a middle class subrurb, and yet when it came time to sign up for the subsidized milk for the kiddo's class, and we were given the option of white or chocolate milk, I hesitated. I asked another mom and the teacher what other kids were doing before responding with - gasp! - chocolate milk. At the time of me asking, everyone else had signed up for chocolate. I just didn't want my kid sitting at the table getting his different milk, crying and whining why he didn't get to have chocolate like everyone else.

With that said, though, I changed my behavior at home when he began getting chocolate milk at school. I stopped offering chocolate milk to him when he came into a coffee shop with me, and stopped making hot chocolate from scratch on the stove as an evening treat for him every so often. I adjusted his food and beverage intake as a result knowing he's getting that at school four days a week, offering water when I picked him up from school instead of another sugar-ladened drink. As a parent, my child's nutrition and physical activity level really stops with me.

What I think will be more difficult than finding the funds, is changing kids behaviors to CHOOSE the healthier food options. I've done everything any childhood nutrition expert has advised parents do to raise a healthy kid with an appetite for fresh healthy foods. What I have now is a kid on today's equivalent of the "meat and potatoes" diet: chicken nuggets and mac-n-cheese. Now, I made my own baby food (fed him Earth's Best when traveling), and all was wonderful and adventurous in the beginning. He ate anything we gave him: every fruit we could think of and find, mangoes, starfruit, blueberries - you name it, he ate it up!

That is until was about 20 months old and he started refusing fruits and vegetables saying he didn't like the skin, they were yucky, they had seeds (he was an early talker). My take- anywhere toddler quickly became a picky demanding little boy reducing the list of healthy foods he would eat one by one each week. I was crushed. I tried not to make a show of it, presenting the foods again without a comment. Why was he suddently refusing peas, carrots, green beans, broccoli, etc. when he used to eat it all up? I then tried making him eat those items or no dessert. No go.

Since he was in the highchair, he has often helped me prepared meals in the kitchen with his Chef hat on - multiple times a week. He'll help me make the meal, but will still refuse to eat it. He goes to the grocery store or farmer's market with me to pick out the food, but will not eat it once we're home. I wonder how many of these nutrition and childhood health experts have actually turned kids like mine around? I freely ask (beg!) anyone to get my kiddo to eat any of the following list like he used to:

• strawberries,
• blueberries,
• grapes,
• apple slices,
• pineapple,
• mango, 
• papaya,
• guava
• green beans,
• peas,
• carrots,
• broccoli 

It's sickening how much good food I've tossed because he simply won't eat it everyday. I don't blame schools for being slow to offer the heatlhy foods knowing full well they'll have kids choosing to forego eating altogether rather than eat the healthier foods. At least that's what mine does. (Fine, no dessert. I don't like grapes, and I'm not going to eat them! You said if I try it and don't like it, it's polite to not say anything and just not eat it.) Or, my fave: the kiddo will put each grape in his mouth one at a time, chew it, then walk after each one over to the trash to spit it out. I ignore him, but it's hard not to laugh.

While I don't think schools are to blame for the obesity epidemic, I do think schools can play a role in combatting it, and I hope parents across the country pay attention and take action to help our kids win the battle against obesity in their generation.

 

 

Comments

[April]

One major thing that's changed since I was in school is that I had PE every day; my 4th grader has it twice a week. Many schools have also shortened recess to give them more time to prep for standardized tests. I think it's all connected.
But I agree with your overall point: it's not schools' job, but up to us as parents to ensure that our kids are eating right. (It just doesn't help when you're packing a healthy lunch and your child is coveting the school's offering of pizza!)

[Carole]

I'm sorry, I'm laughing. It's just another phase. They go through tons of them. Stuff they won't eat one week, they suddenly like - especially if its one of your favorites. It seems all my daughter would eat for a while there was raw broccoli, raw carrots, chicken breast, applesauce, bananas, kiwi, actaully, she was pretty good about fruit.

Anyway, now at 18, she makes good choices, and can cook a few things. Since we've eaten most of our veggies raw, there's no real skill involved.

On your point about these foods being available at school when we were young, they were, but they weren't filled with corn syrup and GMOs like they are now. The content of these foods is very different, and I think it does have something to do with the problems.

During most of her school years, my daughter chose to take her lunch. She didn't want to have to wait in line for food she didn't like. She said the school food was gross.

We used to have a lot of kids hanging around, and of course, they all said they didn't like vegetables. But if I put out a bowl of cherry tomatoes, or broccoli with some french dressing for dipping - it somehow disappeared. I didn't make a big deal about it, I just put it there, and they chose to eat it.

Battle of wills never works too well. You have to find ingenious ways around it.

And I think it goes without saying that it is our job as parents to teach our kids to eat right. Its just that so many parents are fat lazy slobs who don't care about eating right themselves, let alone teaching their kids. Learning at school is the only hope for those kids. I thinks its really sad.

[c2cmom]

Agreed - its all connected. I very much want improvements made to offer more healthful lunches at schools and hope the money can be found and dedicated to doing so! Sometimes I hear things like Change school lunches. Thats why we have an obesity issue, and I just think its *part* of the solution. Are those same kids mowing their lawns and raking the leaves, walking the dog, and vacuuming the floors at home to get daily physical activity like I did a generation ago? Or is that all outsourced these days? Physical activity is key part of combatting obesity (with healthy food choices), and its sad and maddening that its been cut from your childs school schedule when its been shown that exercise can clear the mind and actually help to improve academic scores. (Check out how Naperville (IL) schools increased their phys ed offerings and improved academic scores: http://www.learningreadinesspe.com/ .)

 

[Erica]

It's tough when you're adventurous eater turns picky. I'm there now too with my 5-year old. But we just keep putting out good nutritious food at dinner time and more or less, he finds something in there to eat. And since I still make his lunches and most of his snacks, he gets healthy foods then too.

Of course, fixing school lunches is only a small part of the problem. It's easy to think that it's not a big part of your kids overall diet, unless your family is one of the millions that gets free breakfast and lunch at school due to poverty. Then it's the bulk of your kids diet, and it really does matter that it be nutritious. Plus, all kids will likely learn and behave better if they're eating well (which would help all families at the school, teachers and society). And since we need to tackle the obesity epidemic somewhere, why not start at school? Why not have part of school be about educating our kids to choose from healthy food options, instead of unhealthy ones?
I went to a lecture about exercise and the brain and was blown away by what happened in Naperville, IL when they added all that exercise to schools. I wish we could replicate that across the country.

[c2cmom]

Improving the quality of school lunches is a good first step in this battle and a great way to not only reach the kids, but the parents as well! Im grateful for Secretary Vilsack making himself available to discuss reauthorizing the Childhood Nutrition Act, as it gives us [parents] an initiative to focus our efforts around to help improve the health of the next generation.

 

It seems like such a no-brainer for me. By eating better and being more active, we can improve the academic scores and work productivity of the next generation, reduce their stress and anxiety, and reduce the costs of healthcare over their lifetimes? Like we even need to debate funding this. . .

 

I just dont like parents throwing their hands up and *blaming* schools for the epidemic when other factors are clearly at play (politics, budgets, regional family lifestyle differences, etc.). When we lived in Chicago and moved out to the burbs, we specifically chose Naperville schools BECAUSE of the phys ed and academic programs (weve relocated since then) and I know Otsego schools in MI has adopted some of the same program as well. So it is spreading...s-l-o-w-l-y. Im mobilized to look into our current district to see whats in the works on the food and physical activity fronts. :-)