Sen. Tom Harkin stated that the school lunch program is an opportunity “to make a lasting impact on the nutrition and eating habits” of the nation’s children. Two-thirds of the nation’s elementary schools serve meals that exceed the recommended amount of saturated fat content. Harkin suggested that schools phase out food items with little or no nutritional value and instead introduce no-fat milk, lean meats, whole grain products and fresh produce in their meals.
Cluster analysis was used to identify five segments of consumers: Highest Risk (19%); At Risk (22%); Right Behavior/Wrong Results (33%); Getting Best Results (13%); and Doing OK (12%). 99% of those in the Highest Risk cluster were overweight; members watched the most television and exercised the least. 55% of those in the At Risk cluster were overweight; members logged the most computer time and almost half rarely or never read food labels. 66% of those in the Right Behavior/Wrong Results cluster were overweight; Members reported eating a low percentage of fast food meals (8%) compared to other groups but a higher percentage of other restaurant meals (15%). Less than 6% of those in the Getting Best Results cluster were overweight; every member read food labels and 75% of members’ meals were “made from scratch.” Only 18% of those in the Doing OK cluster were overweight; members watched the least television and reported eating 78% of their meals “made from scratch.”
Activating People
Mar 10
Physical activity in the general population and referral schemes among primary health care patients in a Swedish county are the topic of this Medical Dissertations.
The name game works!
Mar 10
Giving vegetables cool names, like “X-Ray Vision Carrots” nearly doubled how much preschoolers took and ate — even days later they ate 50% more. Enjoy this free chapter from MINDLESS EATING by Brian Wansink.
Smarter Lunchrooms.org
Mar 10
A new website that launched this week: smarterlunchrooms.org. Its goal is to design sustainable lunchrooms that guide smarter choices. Simply replacing pizza with whole-wheat flatbreads and fries with roasted sweet potatoes doesn’t allow kids to learn how to make real-world choices, says David Just, from Cornell University. We set it up so that everything is available and the kids are enabled to see how to make decisions. Making those decisions, he says, leads to good habits.
Quaker Oats Co. said Monday that it will focus more of its marketing effort on its whole-grain oat products. The new campaign from Quaker, owned by PepsiCo Inc (PEP.N), includes television commercials, print and digital ads, billboards, bus and taxi signs, and an event where Quaker employees will give away a million bowls of oatmeal for free. Television ads will start on March 16, with print ads rolling out next month.
Recess helps kids do better in school. These are some of the conclusions in a new book by Stuart Brown: Play has been scientifically proved to be good for the brain. Play teaches us to use our imaginations. Play helps us learn to be friends. Sometimes the best way to learn a complicated subject is to play with it. Kids do better academically when they have recess. Playing at work is not just useful; it’s essential.
Be smart eat fish
Mar 10
Fifteen-year-old males who ate fish at least once a week displayed higher cognitive skills at the age of 18 than those who ate it less frequently, according to a Swedish study of nearly 4,000 teenagers published in the March issue of Acta Paediatrica. Eating fish once a week was enough to increase combined, verbal and visuospatial intelligence scores by an average of 6%, while eating fish more than once a week increased them by just under 11%. Researchers compared the responses of 3,972 males who took part in the survey with the cognitive scores recorded in their Swedish Military Conscription records three years later.
National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN) in the US just released two model school district policies to address food and beverage advertising on school grounds. One not permitting junk food to be sold on school grounds and one restricting advertising on school grounds. They also developed a fact sheet and a legal memo on the First Amendment implications of restricting advertising in schools. Parents, school officials, and advocates may download and use these materials for free.
The fact that an animal’s lifetime is prolonged by decreasing its sugar ingestion is commonly recognized. For instance, why do mice live 40 percent longer when their calorie intake is reduced by half? In a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, scientists from the Université de Montréal, reveal that sugar in itself is not the key element but the cells’ capacity to detect its presence is. The intricate works of the process of aging are still not clearly defined, but the link between aging and calorie consumption is certainly obvious to researchers.