Tag Archives: healthy lifestyles

Limiting Competitive Foods in Schools is Key to Combating Obesity

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Snap peas and lettuce are flourishing in the new White House garden, a project Michelle Obama hopes will call attention to American eating habits. The first family often leads both political and social trends, and child nutrition experts hope Michelle Obama’s influence translates into higher quality school food that helps prevent obesity. Upcoming legislation addresses a growing problem schools are facing: unhealthy foods and drinks impede student health, but they often contribute to school coffers.

School lunches heavily influence nutrition among children and youth. For this reason, The Future of Children addressed school meal programs in the Childhood Obesity issue. The National School Lunch program served 30.5 million school children a day in 2008. In schools participating in the program, sixty percent of children eat school lunches. The federal government heavily subsidizes these lunches and sets minimum nutrition standards that guarantee an adequate provision of protein, Vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron. Still, in many districts these lunches supply too many calories from fat and too few fresh fruits and vegetables. Even more problematic, some districts contract with private companies to sell competitive foods such as fast food in cafeterias and snack vending machines. “Pouring rights” – contracts with companies to sell soda in schools – are also popular. As a result, kids consume a huge amount of unhealthy food and drink items during the school day, and schools have no incentive to change because they benefit financially from the competitive food contracts.
Three significant challenges loom for nutrition advocates. First, school lunches should provide higher-quality food, including fresher produce. Second, the influence of competitive foods must be decreased. Finally, schools need money to afford more expensive food items and supplant income lost from the sale of competitive foods.
One way to bring more healthful food options into cafeterias is to raise standards on school lunches. The federal government’s proposal of one billion more dollars for the National School Lunch Program can reimburse schools for the costs of this improvement. Such national actions would ensure that all children can eat well at school, not just children in more health-conscious or wealthy districts that have already improved their lunch quality.
Moreover, schools should decrease their reliance on competitive foods contracts. The Child Nutrition Act, soon to be revised and reauthorized (House and Senate bills are currently in committee), can impose regulations that limit what outside foods or vending machines may be on school grounds. Ninety-eight percent of high schools have vending machines and such rules could decrease their ubiquity. On their own, schools can look to models in Maine, California, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania that replaced soft drinks with more healthful options, without losing revenue.
U.S. schoolchildren eat nineteen to fifty percent of their daily food while at school, and current regulations allow too much of this food to be unhealthy and fattening. Through increased standards and fewer competitive food contracts, we can make nutritious school lunches a reality for our children.

Social Marketing to Teens Thrives Through Web 2.0 Technology

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YouTube videos for a new public health campaign are going viral: the Boston Public Health Commission hopes its messages on sexual safety, disseminated through new internet media, will spread as markedly among city youth as sexually transmitted diseases have. As highlighted in the Boston Globe, this campaign understands that adolescents today are deeply entrenched in media sources that constantly bombard them with messages about how to live; rather than fighting against media exposure, Boston is responding with a positive message sent through the same channels.
The media is a ubiquitous presence in our lives, from radio to TV to the internet. American teens are particularly influenced by their access to the web, which offers chances both to absorb information from outside sources (“Web 1.0”) and to actively contribute to the internet’s offerings through social networking sites, videos, blogs, or message boards and forums (“Web 2.0”). By capitalizing on these many options that play such a large role in adolescent life, social campaigns such as the STI Prevention Drive in Boston can connect with teens on their own terms.
This concept has been explored in an article in Children and Electronic Media, “Social Marketing Campaigns and Children’s Media Use,” and the companion policy brief “Using the Media to Promote Adolescent Well-Being.” Both of these recognize the positive ways that online media can be used to promote healthy behaviors, and they detail successful Web 2.0 campaigns.
With internet available in schools, homes, and even on cell phones, preventing teens from viewing objectionable content is virtually impossible. Some have worried that teens’ web use will lead to more dangerous sexual behavior, including becoming sexually active at a younger age and being less cautious about disease and pregnancy prevention – issues that are explored in another FOC article, “Media and Risky Behaviors.” While such concerns are not unfounded, the designers of Web 2.0 media campaigns recognize that rather than prohibiting internet access, it is far more successful to fight fire with fire – using the same media that promote unhealthy behaviors to promote healthy ones.
While parental guidance and school programs can play a role in discouraging unhealthy behaviors, Web 2.0 media campaigns acknowledge the reality that adolescents are heavily influenced by their peers. The new Boston campaign uses YouTube videos generated by and starring teens, and it also recruits teens to spread the message through other forums, such as street theater and visual advertisements. By having the teens design the content, the messages are more accessible than if they were created and imposed on teens by adults.

Web 2.0 campaigns also offer social organizations increased potential for spreading their messages. For example, the Boston Public Health Commission will field anonymous Facebook questions to experts, allowing teens to ask and get information without embarrassment or social stigma. The internet allows for viral messaging as well – videos can be passed around through blogs, Twitter, emails, or even news coverage, greatly increasing their reach. Marketers know that casual but frequent exposure to a message makes consumers more likely to buy their products; Web 2.0 campaigns use the same methods to promote healthy lifestyle choices among teens.

Health Care Coverage for Adults Improves Children’s Health

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A new health care bill is taking form in Congress, setting off a national conversation about what an ideal health care plan for the country should look like. Two recent volumes of The Future of Children address the importance of health care for children: “Children’s Health and Social Mobility” in Opportunity in America, and “A Health Plan to Reduce Poverty” in The Next Generation of Antipoverty Programs.
The nation’s health care concerns are not just about coverage, but also about having healthier citizens – and healthy lifestyles begin in childhood. One way to increase child health is to increase their parents’ access to healthcare—parents who are proactive about their own health are often better at getting their kids preventative care too, rather than just going to hospital emergency rooms when problems emerge. Although nearly all children in families with incomes under 200 percent of poverty are eligible for either Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the parents of these poor and near-poor children often lack health insurance.
Parents who leave welfare normally lose coverage after one year unless their employer provides it, and many employers of low-wage workers do not offer health insurance. As a result, many of the working poor and near-poor have no coverage at all, and the idea of losing Medicaid even discourages adults from working. More available and affordable health care would both remove this disincentive from work and benefit children’s health. Beyond increasing health care coverage for parents, a government plan should also educate parents as “the primary gatekeepers for their children’s health.” Even if health care is available, parents must learn how to make the best use of preventative care and medical information.
Health issues of low-income children have major consequences for both them and society at large. These children may miss more classes or be less able to concentrate on studies, ultimately making them less likely to stay in school. Education challenges and health issues persisting into adulthood may decrease earnings and socioeconomic status. This has wider consequences, as lower-income families may require more state support while contributing fewer tax dollars. In addition, education is often seen as “the great equalizer” and the means by which the American Dream operates, so if the poor health of lower-income children limits their social mobility then America may not be living up to its full promise. These situations are problems for all of society, not just those most directly affected, so health care reform that improves child health should be universally appealing.