Open-ended interviews of 76 obese Australians. Participants’ blamed themselves for being unable to maintain their weight loss or ‘stick’ to diets. Whilst diets did not result in sustained weight loss, two thirds of participants felt that dieting was an effective way to lose weight. Few had used, or were motivated to participate in physical activity.
More than 200 children and young people with diabetes from across the country will today travel to a Diabetes UK lobby of Parliament to ask MPs to improve support for pupils with diabetes in schools in England.
Perishable Pundit collected lots of details on the process behind getting the school fruit and vegetable schemes in Europe adopted. And the challenges ahead.
Better Canadian School Food
Nov 21
Canadian dietitians are commending food service establishments for their enhanced efforts to improve the nutritional value of food served in schools. They are continually adding reformulated products to the Brand Name Food List (www.brandnamefoodlist.ca) that previously could not be sold to students because they were too low in nutrients and too high in calories, fat, sugar and/or salt.
Århus i bevægelse
Nov 21
I den nye rapport ‘Bevæg Århus – bevægelse og motion’ lægger kommunen op til, at borgerne skal blive mere fysisk aktive, og rapporten foreslår, at aktiviteterne i højere grad tænkes ind de daglige gøremål og ikke kun i idrætsaktiviteter. Rapporten fokuserer på det offentlige rum: gader, veje, cykelstier, torve, pladser, parker, legepladser og skove. Her findes der et uudnyttet potentiale for bevægelse, der går ud over den almindelige trafikafvikling. Den beskriver bevægelseskorridorer/ruter og motionsinventar.
The Food Standards Agency is an independent UK Government department. They worked closely with the UK’s largest workplace caterers and high street restaurant chains to help them enable their customers to make healthier choices when eating out. The commitments were just published. Good job FSA – very inspiring to read!
On November 19th the political agreement was reached by The European Commission. The European Union-wide scheme will provide fruit and vegetables to school children worth €90 million every year. The funds will pay for the purchase and distribution of fresh fruit and vegetables to schools.
This money will be matched by national and private funds in those Member States which chose to make use of the programme.
An estimated 22 million children in the EU are overweight. More than 5 million these are obese and this figure is expected to rise by 400,000 every year. Improved nutrition can play an important part in combating this problem. The scheme will begin at the start of the 2009/2010 school year.
Please see the proposal it self, the Impact Assessment, the Summary or the Annexes.
Reaction from the Danish Cancer Society (in Danish) can be found here.
Læs her hvad Kræftens Bekæmpelse synes om de nye 670 milioner til skolefrugt.
This longitudinal study based on 896 Norwegian adolescents conclude that perceived accessibility appears to be the strongest mediator of the relationship between adolescents’ FV intake and their parents’ educational level and income and may therefore be an important target for future interventions that aim to reduce socioeconomic disparities in adolescents’ FV intake.
Karen Lock and Joia de Sa wrote this review of school fruit and vegetable programmes. School schemes are effective at increasing both intake and knowledge. Of the 30 studies included, 70% increased fruits and vegetables (FV) intake, with none decreasing intake. Twenty-three studies had follow-up periods >1 year and provide some evidence that FV schemes can have long-term impacts on consumption. Only one study led to both increased fruit and vegetable intake and reduction in weight.