Schools must teach fitness and nutrition, experts say

DEBBIE CAFAZZO; The News Tribune
Last updated: February 28th, 2005 12:48 PM (PST)

“Three out of five, healthy and alive,” she says, as she piles hummus, pita bread and grapes next to the mashed potatoes and gravy on her school lunch tray.

“It means you get dairy, protein – all those,” she says, referring to the five food groups Lincoln kids learn about.

At her school, eating healthfully – even organically – comes naturally.

In 2002, at the urging of a parent, Lincoln began offering a salad bar with organic produce. Each day, kids choose from whole-grain breads, vegetarian protein alternatives like hummus and a variety of locally grown organic fruits and vegetables.

While the cafeteria also uses some of the same food commodities supplied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that schools across the country serve, it tries to aim for healthier offerings. Instead of processed chicken nuggets, it serves pieces of chicken. Instead of fries, there are baked or roasted red potatoes.

Desserts are a thing of the past. Nutrition education – the source of the “three out of five” rhyme – has increased.

The moves have proved popular – so popular that schools throughout the Olympia School District have copied them.

The changes have also been affordable.

Paul Flock, the district food service supervisor, discovered a program that allows him to spend 20 percent of the district’s federal food dollars on fresh produce. He said food costs have decreased 2 cents per meal since the district started emphasizing healthful eating.

Not everyone embraced the change wholeheartedly.

“We found initially, a lot of kids were a little upset,” Flock said. “My door was like a revolving door the first couple of weeks. But I knew it was the right thing to do.”

And kids responded.

“At Olympia High School, we used to sell a lot of Domino’s” pizza, he said. But the district canceled its contract with the pizzeria to save money. “The kids bought other things. Our participation (in the school lunch program) is actually up.”

And other school districts, including in Tacoma, are starting to take a look at how Olympia has successfully overhauled its lunch program, he said.

Lunch laments

Last year, a statewide advocacy group called The Children’s Alliance published “Nutrition and Schools.” The report is based on focus group discussions with high school students in Tacoma – at Mount Tahoma and Lincoln high schools – as well as those in Spokane and in Sunnyside, Yakima County, and their parents.

Lunch menus were typically described as including chicken nuggets, nachos, pizza, corn dogs, fries, cookies, chips and hamburgers. Only a few students said they intentionally choose healthier options, such as salad or yogurt.

Virtually no student reported bringing lunch from home – too geeky, they said. They also complained of too-short lunch times and crowded cafeterias that make getting a decent meal difficult.

“When asked if they ever thought about eating wheat bread instead of white, or chicken breasts rather than legs,” the report noted, “most students responded with blank stares.

“This may indicate that they have a general understanding – such as cookies are bad, vegetables are good – but have a hard time making more sophisticated distinctions.”

One notable exception to a lack of nutrition knowledge came from students involved in organized sports. Coaches do offer good diet and nutrition advice, students said. But youngsters said they frequently abandon such advice once the sporting season is over.

Shelley Curtis, who guides nutrition policy for the Children’s Alliance, said people ask her, “Why improve school lunches, when what’s at home is worse?”

But Curtis pointed out that “not every child is in an optimal situation. Not every family has the support or time they need.”

She offered the example of a single mother with two kids and two jobs. For her, Curtis said, eating five fruits and vegetables every day might be low on the priority list.

“We have to make sure the environment supports healthy eating,” she said.

And the environment for kids, on most days, is school.

strides toward exercise

In addition to the issue of what kids eat at school, there’s the question of how much they move.

Patricia Benavidez, a physical education teacher at Evergreen Elementary School in the Bethel School District, taught in the 1960s and 1970s. She took a break and then returned in 1995.

“I see a big difference in the level of activity kids are involved with,” she said. “The fitness levels of kids have gone down significantly.”

She said that in her first years of teaching, she might have had one or two overweight children in a school.

“Now, there’s three or four in every class,” she said.

That surge is one reason she worked to get her school a grant to train teachers and staff members about improving Evergreen’s fitness climate. The school sponsored a bike fair for the community, and staff members have started a walking club. Evergreen also has a team of students that travels to other schools demonstrating tumbling, rope-jumping and other ways to keep fit.

But in many districts, money, space and time for physical education are at a premium.

“We’re cognizant of the importance of physical activity,” says Orting School District Superintendent Jeff Davis.

But in his small district, facilities are tight. Several schools, for example, share gym space at the high school.

In the Tacoma School District, playground politics have pitted administrators against parents and some teachers over the issue of elementary school recess.

This past fall, a memo went out to principals reminding them that no regularly scheduled recess was allowed outside the after-lunch play break. That generally lasts less than half an hour. The PTA has asked the school board to mandate at least one more 15-minute recess a day for elementary students, but the issue remains under discussion.

In Fife, high school students keep track of their own blood pressure reading, heart rate, body mass index and other measures of fitness.

Joseph Piscatella, a Gig Harbor author of books on healthy lifestyles for children and adults, believes schools need to make physical education a renewed priority.

“In the world of the 1960s and 1970s, we managed to squeeze it in,” he said. “We need to take another look – go back and prioritize. Physical education as a lifetime skill has to rank with everything else we’re teaching.”

law will require health policy

By August, every school district in Washington state must adopt a nutrition and physical fitness policy. The requirement comes from a new state law, sponsored by state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle).

“The junk food culture in Washington’s public schools is widespread, largely due to the cash incentives from purveyors of sugar-laden snack food and drinks,” she says.

Most schools get a cut of the revenue from vending machines on their premises. The money is often used to support student activities.

If a school is part of the federal lunch program, as most are, candy and soda pop can’t be sold during the lunch period. But the time before and after school is fair game.

Health advocates say that if vending machines sold apples and carrot sticks instead of candy, and bottled water instead of soda pop, kids would still put their dollars into the machines.

Washington isn’t the only state that’s concerned about what kids eat at school.

Just last week, Maryland’s state school board approved new guidelines on snack food in schools. The guidelines, which are optional, urge schools to eliminate high-fat and high-sugar foods and to turn off snack vending machines until after school.

Three years ago, California banned the sale of junk food and soda in elementary schools and limited soda sales in middle schools.

In the South Sound, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department is offering guidance to school districts throughout the county as they consider new fitness and nutrition policies.

Pediatricians in Puyallup have decided to help the Puyallup School District in coordinating a program on childhood obesity prevention.

The Washington State School Directors Association has published a model policy for school boards to consider. But it’s only a list of suggestions. Each school board will decide how strictly to apply the ideas.

The model policy urges districts to:

 • Adopt a comprehensive curriculum on health, fitness and nutrition.

 • Serve a variety of healthy foods.

 • Regulate the sale of foods high in fat, sodium or sugar, and stock vending machines with “only nutritionally healthy food and beverages.”

 • Stick to state rules that already require students in grades one through eight to get an average of 100 minutes a week of physical education. The model policy specifically urges 20 minutes a day of aerobic activity for middle school students.

 • Offer daily recess for elementary kids, with unstructured but supervised active play.

 • Offer a one-credit physical education course for each high school grade level. Students currently must obtain two credits in health and fitness to satisfy state graduation requirements.

“With childhood obesity at epidemic proportions, schools need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Kohl-Welles says.

Childhood obesity is a major health concern, but few programs are in place to address the problem. Nationally, 16 percent of children are overweight. Throughout the South Sound, officials only now are responding to what many in the medical profession call a crisis.

sunDAY: Many local efforts to battle childhood obesity are still in their infancy.

toDAY: How schools are trying to improve food and fitness.

TUESDAY IN SOUNDLIFE: A Puyallup girl and her father slim down together.

Originally published: February 28th, 2005 12:01 AM (PST)