Childhood Obesity Programs Failing July 5, 2007, 12:24AM
Schools can't seem to fight fat
Health programs have not curbed childhood obesity
By MARTHA MENDOZA
Associated Press
PANORAMA CITY, Calif. — The federal government will spend more than $1 billion this year on nutrition education — fresh carrot and celery snacks, videos of dancing fruit, hundreds of hours of lively lessons about how great you will feel if you eat well.
But an Associated Press review of scientific studies examining 57 such programs found mostly failure. Just four showed any real success in changing the way kids eat — or any promise as weapons against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity.
"Any person looking at the published literature about these programs would have to conclude that they are generally not working," said Dr. Tom Baranowski, a pediatrics professor at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine who studies behavioral nutrition.
The results have been disappointing, to say the least:
• Last year, a major federal pilot program offering free fruits and vegetables to children showed fifth-graders became less willing to eat them than they had been at the start. Apparently they didn't like the taste.
• In Pennsylvania, researchers went so far as to give prizes to children who ate fruits and vegetables. That worked while the prizes were offered, but when the researchers came back seven months later the kids had reverted to their original eating habits: soda and chips.
• In studies where children tell researchers they are eating better or exercising more, there is usually no change in blood pressure, body size or cholesterol measures; they want to eat better, they might even think they are, but they're not.
The studies don't tell Leticia Jenkins anything she doesn't know. She's one of the bravest teachers in America — not because she gave her seventh- and eighth-graders 30 sharp knives to chop tomatoes, onions, jalapenos and limes for a lesson on salsa and nutrition, but because she understands the futility of what she is trying to do.
"Oh, it's so hard, because at the end of the day sometimes I take a moment, I think gosh, I did all this and we still see them across the street picking up the doughnuts and the coffee drinks," she said.
Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., nominated as the next surgeon general, says fighting childhood obesity is his top priority.
The challenges to changing the way children eat are as numerous as the factors that have prompted the obesity epidemic in the first place.
The forces that make kids fat are "hard to fight with just a program in school," said Dr. Philip Zeitler, a pediatric endocrinologist and researcher who sees "a steady stream" of obese children struggling with diabetes and other potentially fatal medical problems at The Children's Hospital in Denver.
"I'm not aware of any medical model that is very successful in helping these kids," he said.
Obstacles include the failure of parents to instill good eating habits, the impact of poverty on diet and exercise, and TV advertising for candy, snacks, cereal and fast food.
Kate Houston, deputy under secretary of the USDA's Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, oversees most federal funds, $696 million this year, spent on childhood nutrition education in this country. Houston insists the programs are successful.
"We're finding success in things in which we have been able to measure, which are more related to knowledge and skill. It is more difficult for us to identify success in changing children's eating patterns."
Childhood Obesity Programs
Boy is this a sad site to hear. I think there needs to be a revamping of all these programs so that they all utilize bits and pieces from programs that have worked to fight childhood obesity.