S'More From The AP
Week Ending February 20, 2015
The 21 Day Challenge- With Mr. Restuccia
According to data, it takes at least 3 weeks to start a habit. The challenge is designed to change snacking habits into healthier choices. We want our students, staff and their families to get the full benefit of this creative program. So, after the 21 days has expired, Medical City will wait another 3 weeks before they send a survey to parents’ email address asking about their child’s eating habits and if they changed with the challenge. For those parents who respond to the survey, a backpack and gift will be given to their child after March 30th.
As a PE teacher, my primary goal during this event is to get my students to realize that the eating habits that they are developing now will effect the quality of their lives in the future. I want them to grow up to be happy, healthy adults.
Obesity is a chronic disease with a multitude of contributing factors, including lifestyle, social, and socioeconomic influences; bigger portion sizes and unhealthy food choices are also often to blame. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the rate of obesity amongst children has tripled over the past 30 years, with currently 12.5 million children and adolescents being obese. Consequently, there has also been a rise in chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol that are usually seen in adults.
Medical City Children’s Hospital created the “Kids Teaching Kids” program, which focuses on at-home snacking, to help fight childhood obesity. Snacking has increased among children over the same 30-year time span. Snacks are an important part of a child’s diet and often bridge a gap between meals, and trends indicate approximately 27% of calories come from snacks. Candies, desserts, salty snacks, and sweetened beverages provide most of the calories, instead of healthier options such as fruits and vegetables. Recent studies show that low fruit and vegetable intake may be related to obesity. Several studies have also shown school-based nutrition intervention programs are associated with improved fruit and vegetable intake.
Medical City Children’s Hospital works with high school culinary students in the Texas ProStart program to create nutritious snacks that are fun and tasty; a fruit or vegetable component is an integral part of the snack being created. In the spring of 2014, Medical City Children’s Hospital, The Colony High School, and the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association worked together to publish a snack book promoting fruits and vegetables for the elementary kids in the Lewisville school district. The photography students photographed the snack preparation sessions and the graphic design students planned the layout of the book.
In previous years, Medical City Children’s Hospital was able to give the recipe book to every 4th and 5th grader in LISD! This year, with support from LISD Administration and LISD PTA, Medical City Children’s Hospital has given a free copy of this well-designed, kids-created snack book to every elementary student in LISD!
Since its inception, the “Kids Teaching Kids” program has been endorsed by many organizations including the Cooper Institute. The goal of this program is to introduce school-aged children to healthier snack choices with a variety of fruits and vegetables, and to empower our future chefs to be the leaders in encouraging the use of healthier and more nutrient-dense ingredients when preparing foods which the younger kids can independently make and enjoy.
You can learn more about the 21 Day Challenge by visiting the link below!
The Principal Ponders
Ponder this for a minute – Is it possible to be starving AND obese the same time? Turns out, 1 in 3 kids in America are both. When kids live in poverty, or struggling families have to make the choice between putting cheaper, unhealthy food on the table or no food at all―eating healthy isn’t a choice. As a result, more than half of children living below the poverty line are overweight or obese.
While the majority of our students aren’t faced with poverty on a day-to-day basis, there are many that experience it situationally, either due to a job loss/layoff, divorce, death of a parent, etc. I am sure some of our struggling families have been faced with making unhealthy food choices for their children, just to ensure they had food to eat.
Eating well and being physically active at an early age helps children focus, improve attendance, boost academic performance and grow up to be healthy adults. Programs such as “Kids Teaching Kids” and the “21 Day Challenge” provide children with age-appropriate resources to encourage and support them in making healthy lifestyle choices. As educators, we can model healthy food choices with the types of snacks we have students bring during snack time, as well as continue to stress the importance of healthy eating and physical activity. But no worries……there will still be chocolate for you in my office. It will be our little secret!