Schools strive to take a bite out of obesity
By CHRIS SHOLLY
Staff Writer
Lebanon Daily News
Sandy Moritz is passionate about getting children to eat healthier foods and to exercise.
Moritz, a nurse at Cornwall Elementary School, meets her dawn patrol — a group of students who come to school 50 minutes early for some extra exercise, like playing soccer or riding bikes.
Like many districts around the state and nation, Cornwall-Lebanon is looking for ways to help reduce obesity among children, which has become a national concern.
The number of children who are considered overweight in Pennsylvania has risen by 2 percent over the past two years, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Now, one child out of every five is overweight.
“It’s a growing problem,” said Dr. Ronald J. Williams, director of the Penn State Children’s Hospital Pediatric Multidisciplinary Weight Loss Program. “It’s a problem that has not peaked yet. It’s still rising.”
Williams said children who are overweight may develop adult-level illnesses, such as heart disease, high blood
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pressure, sleep apnea and diabetes.
Little research has been done on the long-term effects of obesity in children, he said.
“What we have seen is a significant rise in adult diabetes in teenagers,” he said.
Statistics show that more than half of all childhood cases of diabetes are related to obesity, compared to 20 percent a decade ago, he said. That’s a major concern for the health-care community.
“If you and I get diabetes and hypertension, we have it for 30 to 40 years, we die. That’s life,” he said. “If a teenager has it for 30 to 40 years, they’re still in the prime of their life.”
Physical fitness could help reduce these problems, Williams said.
“Studies show that people who are more active, regardless of their weight, do better than those who are not active,” he said.
Williams said about 30 percent of teens and children he sees have an elevated blood pressure on their first visit, and it takes about three and a half months to get their blood pressure down to normal.
C-L fights obesity
Cornwall-Lebanon is one of three central Pennsylvania school districts — Harrisburg and Lower Dauphin are the other two — participating in a pilot program designed by the Hershey Medical Center to reduce obesity in children. The Derry Township hospital received $135,000 last month from Kohl’s department store for the program.
Moritz said programs like this will help reduce obesity in children.
“It didn’t occur overnight,” she said. “It will take a long time to make it turn around.”
Under the pilot program at Cornwall-Lebanon, elementary students meet with an exercise physiologist from the Hershey Medical Center and a nutritionist, both of whom help them develop better eating and exercise habits.
“We know if students are active between classes: Their brains work better,” said Moritz, who is also Cornwall-Lebanon’s Health Services chairwoman.
At the end of the year, medical-center officials will look at the results of the program to see how much weight students lost and look for other improvements in their health, such as lower blood pressure.
Focusing on wellness
Other school districts are pushing healthier eating habits and exercise, too.
Under a 2004 federal regulation, all schools that participate in the National School Lunch program must give students more healthy food choices and develop wellness policies.
At Cornwall-Lebanon, wellness has been a focus for 17 years. Dr. Joseph V. Kristobak Jr., director of elementary education, said the district began focusing on wellness under former Superintendent Edward Phillips after he suffered a heart attack.
The district’s wellness team includes teachers, administrators and classified employees. The team sponsors free health screenings on campus and some exercise activities for students, such as the annual fun run.
Kristobak said his district developed a new cafeteria menu a year before it was mandated by the new rules.
Palmyra Area School District adopted its wellness program this year. Among other things, the policy limits the number of fatty foods, including cafeteria foods and food sold for fund-raisers or offered at classroom parties.
School districts must meet the federal standards or risk losing money they receive through the federal lunch and other government programs. For Palmyra, that figure could be as high as $400,000, according to business manager Darcy Brenner-Smith.
The district didn’t have to make many changes to its school-lunch menu. She said the menu already met federal requirements of 10 percent or less in saturated fats and 30 percent or less in total fats.
But a la carte items offered were changed this year to meet the new nutrition standards. For example, serving sizes of a la carte snacks and drinks have been reduced.
“Packages of potato chips have been reduced from a 1-ounce serving to a three-quarters-ounce serving,” Brenner-Smith said. “Packages of crackers and Tastykakes that did not meet the nutrition standards were eliminated.”
Rice Krispie Treats have replaced some of the higher-calorie snacks. Fat-free ice cream, yogurt, pudding pops and low-fat ice-cream sandwiches also have been added to the menu.
Palmyra Area High School senior Ryan Snyder said most students have accepted the food changes.
“We’re getting much of the same things; everything is just smaller portions,” the 17-year-old student-body president said. “We also got some stuff that’s really good, such as really good hot popcorn and cinnamon snacks, which everybody really likes. But they did get rid of Pringles. ... Nobody likes that.”
Brenner-Smith said most parents have supported the changes.
“Parents of children with food allergies have been pleased with the policy changes because it reduces the risk of allergic reactions,” she added.
BMI is OK
Pennsylvania also now requires school districts to monitor students’ Body Mass Index, or BMI.
BMI is calculated from a person’s weight and height. Although it does not measure body fat directly, it is an indicator of a person’s body fatness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brenner-Smith said the district has received few complaints from parents over the BMI results.
Kristobak said some parents at Cornwall-Lebanon also raised concerns about the BMI numbers, but after it was explained, they understood how it could help them.
“Parents are eager to learn more about (wellness) and helping their kids to do better,” he said. “What is nice is that finally everyone is getting involved, including the food companies.”
Since the district began to monitor students’ BMI last year, Moritz said, rates have declined. She pointed out that 35 percent of students nationally are overweight or at risk of being overweight. At Cornwall Elementary, that figure is 28 percent.
“We’re not seeing a significant drop in our rates, but it’s not increasing as it is nationally,” she said. “We hope we’re having an impact.”
Schools tackle childhood obesity