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The big soft drink makers are banning themselves.
At least, that's the way they'd like you to view it. The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and Cadbury Schweppes announced earlier this month that they will no longer sell full-calorie carbonated beverages during the school day to middle school students.
That's a statement that says more by what it doesn't say than what it does. What the industry hasn't done is ban fully-sugared drinks entirely: 1) middle school students will still be able to get them after school if their schools haven't otherwise restricted them and 2) high school students will have unfettered access to full-sugared soft drinks, unless otherwise banned. In the year 2000, 94 percent of high schools sold soft drinks from these companies in their schools, though that figure surely has changed as policy bans have occured in the intervening 5 years.
Advocates for such bans say the soft drink industry made this recent move to ward off more strigent controls that surely are coming down the pike from local, state and federal legislation. Compliance with the new guidelines among the soft drink makers is, however, entirely voluntarily.
Hmmm....
What do you think? Has the soft drink industry gone far enough in policing themselves here? Should federal, state, or local legislation step in? Use the comment box below to send your opinion. (There's a slight delay for your comment to appear as we check for spam.)
ABOUT CREATING HEALTHY KIDS
We're looking for a few good bloggers for Creating Healthy Kids.
If your school is considering reforms in the eating habits of students, we'd love to hear from you.
Or, if you wish your school was doing something, we'd love to hear from you.
We can't promise you fame or glory, but we can promise you some discounts on yogurt.
Please contact Chief Blogger Chris Halvorson directly at chalvorson@stonyfield.com and put "School blogger" in the subject line. To be considered, you'll need access to a computer with internet and email capabilities, and the passion, desire and ability to write! This could even be a class project. Teachers?
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The Board of Education in Arkansas, where 40 percent of school kids are considered overweight or obese, has taken a few steps toward improving school food. Earlier this month, the board passed rules limiting student access to vending machines and to sugared drinks. Including in the reforms is a requirement to start 30 minutes of physical activity each day for K-12 by the end of this upcoming school year.
Under the new rules, vending machines are totally banned from elementary schools, and machines will be available to middle and high school students only later in the day, 30 minutes after the final lunch period. Soft drinks sold in vending machines must be 12 ounces or less, and only half of the items in a vending machine can be junk food (or, to use the technical term, food of "no nutritional value").
We tip our lids to the Arkansas Board of Education!
ABOUT CREATING HEALTHY KIDS
We're looking for a few good bloggers for Creating Healthy Kids.
If your school is considering reforms in the eating habits of students, we'd love to hear from you.
Or, if you wish your school was doing something, we'd love to hear from you.
We can't promise you fame or glory, but we can promise you some discounts on yogurt.
Please contact Chief Blogger Chris Halvorson directly at chalvorson@stonyfield.com and put "School blogger" in the subject line. To be considered, you'll need access to a computer with internet and email capabilities, and the passion, desire and ability to write! This could even be a class project. Teachers?
Subscribe to Creating Healthy Kids by using the box at the upper left and you'll get entries direct to your e-mail.
Two dieticians' moms offer their own nutrition advice for parents trying to pack a healthy lunch for their children. The article makes for interesting reading. Here’s one fun rule one of the moms introduced: A brown-bag lunch should never include a food that hasn't been introduced at home first, she said. It will be tossed.
Check out our own advice for packing healthy lunches in Menu for Change.
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We're looking for a few good bloggers here at Stonyfield Farm and Creating Healthy Kids.
If you are a school student, a concerned parent, a teacher or a school official, we'd love to hear about the state of school food at your school.
Students...write to us occasionally and tell us what's on the menu at your school and what you thought of it.
Parents...are you watching what your child eats while at school? Are you serving on a committee reviewing food and vending policies? We'd welcome your periodic reports here in Creating Healthy Kids.
Teachers and administrators: How do you see food choices affecting your students? Are you involved in projects to change the menu, or increase physical activity levels at your school? Is your state considering new legislation?
As a new school year begins, please consider being a Guest Blogger here at Creating Healthy Kids. We can't promise you fame or glory, but we can promise you some discounts on yogurt.
Please contact Chief Blogger Chris Halvorson directly at chalvorson@stonyfield.com and put "School blogger" in the subject line. Chris will then give you all the training you need to take part in the Creating Healthy Kids blog. You'll also need to have access to a computer with internet and email capabilities, and the passion and desire to want to write a little something every now and then! Or a lot of something, whenever you want!
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Some kids in North Carolina are getting healthy foods and snacks, which might have been unavailable to them otherwise throughout summer. A YMCA in Kannapolis qualified for a federally-funded program to provide free healthy lunches and snacks to the town’s qualifying students. Lunch might be a deli sandwich with turkey and cheese, potato wedges, applesauce and low-fat milks, and snacks are pineapple juice or low-fat muffins. Organizers hope the pilot program is so successful this summer that they’ll be able to repeat it next year. We tip our lids to the YMCA in Kannapolis!
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**WE NEED YOUR HELP!**
Help us decide on some future flavors for our frozen yogurt and ice cream products!
We'd be grateful if you took our on-line consumer survey by August 17.
Did you know that New York City public schools has an "executive chef"? We didn't either, until we read about him in a recent Newsweek article (which we're proud to say also included mention of Stonyfield's healthy vending machine program). The chef in New York schools is trying to do something about the appallingly bad food served in his schools, much like schools across the country. In addition to other initiatives, he's banned the breaded and fried variety of chicken and got his suppliers to bring in alternatives.
Other notable facts from the Newsweek article:
* 4.8 billion hot lunches are served in public schools every year across the country. The meals are often produced for about $1 each and frequently include breaded meat patties, french fries and overcooked vegetables.
* McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell are food suppliers in more than half the schools in the nation.
* School kitchens are often no longer equipped to prepare food, only to reheat food.
Check out the newsweek article, then click through to a feature they ran back in January, a Q & A with the author of Generation Extra Large: Rescuing our Children from the Epidemic of Obesity."
**WE NEED YOUR HELP!**
Help us decide on some future flavors for our frozen yogurt and ice cream products!
We'd be grateful if you took our on-line consumer survey by August 17.
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Kids who are considered in the “high normal” range of weight when they are between ages 8 and 15 are at risk of becoming obese or overweight as young adults. That’s the finding of new research out of Harvard Medical School. Among those kids in the study, nearly half of the boys and a quarter of the girls became overweight or obese by the time they were young adults. The results showed that boys with a high Body Mass Index (BMI) were at greater risk of developing high blood pressure as young adults. The implication of these findings is that prevention of childhood overweight and obesity is even more important than we thought. “We must focus not only on the most obese kids but also on those who are just a bit overweight,” said one researcher.
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**Is there a baby in the house? Check out Baby Babble and Toddler Talk, to vent and join the conversation. Open 24/7, same as you.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has put together a research paper on how fast-food chains and other restaurants should be required to post the nutritional content of their food for all to see. Making the argument that people who are at least trying to pay attention to what they eat have a difficult time discerning one menu from another, the group is supporting legislation to require it. CSPI offers this example: At a Starbucks coffee shop, a "venti Caffe Mocha" with whole milk is triple the calories of a "grande Caffe Latte" with skim milk, and contains three-quarters of the fat you should be consuming in one whole day. A little information at the menu board would go a long way toward helping consumers make healthier choices. Read more about why CSPI is supporting nutrition labeling information, then take our poll below. Feel free to add your own comments using the "comment" feature below.
Hey, before you go away, you may want to join the rumble over in Strong Women Daily News, where lots of real women are weighing in on the question of using "real" women in an ad for thigh cream. Guess we touched a nerve! Feel free to continue the conversation by using the comment feature there.
**WE NEED YOUR HELP!**
Help us decide on some future flavors for our frozen yogurt and ice cream products!
We'd be grateful if you took our on-line consumer survey by August 17.
ABOUT CREATING HEALTHY KIDS
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The American Diabetes Association has responded to the growing epidemic of childhood obesity (with its increased risk of diabetes) by creating a new organization that will focus on excess weight, obesity, and a better scientific understanding of weight management. The new organization is called Shaping America's Health: Association for Weight Management and Obesity Prevention. It will begin with a program called Shaping America's Youth (SAY), which kicks off this fall with four large-scale town hall meetings around the country. These meetings will garner information from a diverse group of communities and look at the best programs already operating and, perhaps, ones that can be duplicated elsewhere. And, as a first step toward understanding successful programs, SAY has put together a database of 1,000 related programs that are already operating.
We tip our lids to the American Diabetes Association and this new, large-scale focus on obesity!
ABOUT CREATING HEALTHY KIDS
**WE NEED YOUR HELP!**
Help us decide on some future flavors for our frozen yogurt and ice cream products!
We'd be grateful if you took our on-line consumer survey by August 17.
* Subscribe by using the box at the upper left and you'll get entries direct to your e-mail.
Second-hand smoke can cause teenagers to develop Metabolic Syndrome, a disorder characterized by excess belly fat. The syndrome is implicated in an increased risk of stroke, heart disease and diabetes. A recent study, reported by the Associated Press, makes the link for the first time. It showed that 6 percent of teens ages 12 to 19 had Metabolic Syndrome, and this rate increased if they had had exposure to tobacco smoke. “The study found that 1 percent of those unexposed to smoke developed the syndrome, 5 percent of those exposed to secondhand smoke had the disorder and 9 percent of active smokers had it.”
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Getting fit is a good thing for today’s teens, but a small group of them seems to be taking it a bit too far. Some teens are turning to supplements, which could be dangerous, according to an Associated Press report by Lindsey Tanner. For the record, the American Academy of Pediatrics has a policy that states that performance-enhancing supplements are “unproven and under-regulated and should not be used by children or teens.”
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Hypertension and liver problems—adult maladies, right? Well, one Delaware teenager faced those problems when his weight climbed to 346 pounds. Now the teen is working on losing weight and getting fit, ever since a doctor told him his liver would give out at age 40 if he wasn’t careful. So far, Max Slover has lost 40 pounds. "I have changed a lot, my eating habits and my behaviors," he said, in a recent interview with the Delaware State News. “I feel better now that I'm losing weight. I need new clothes all the time.”
We tip our lids to Max and all other teens out there who have taken strides toward a healthier weight.
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Yesterday, our CE'Yo Gary Hirshberg was part of a special event coinciding with the opening of the ESPN X Games today in Los Angeles. Stonyfield is sponsoring skateboarder Bob Burnquist, but is also contributing to an effort to use all those leftover materials from the games to supply inner city youth groups with skateboard parks of their own. The group, called the Action Sports Environmental Coalition, held a special event yesterday to announce that one skate park will go to the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Youth Athletic League in the Lenox area of South Central LA.
Above: Bob Burnquist and Gary Hirshberg meet in the athlete's lounge, where competitors can munch on things like Stonyfield Farm smoothies!
Below Right: Bob and Gary head into the crowd of skateboard park recipients from southern L.A. Below left: Youth groups received free skateboards from the athletes.
Today, competition begins and we hope to be bringing you news coverage via some mini-movies here at Creating Healthy Kids to show Bob Burnquist in action. For now, check out two mini-movies of yesterday's special event. First, our Gary is introduced by the Action Sports representative. (That's our Gary in the purple shirt, hiding behind the camera man.) Next, the Action Sports representative is about to introduce Bob Burnquist who stands next to--who else?--Daryl Hannah, a supporter of this environmental initiative! (if you have a slow internet connection, this is gonna sound and look funny.)
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The folks at Calorie Lab today point out that research in Pennsylvania is turning up some disheartening statistics on how school kids eat (like we needed more of that?!). Research shows kids are prone to picking up junk food on their way to school, say, at the corner store, and those added calories are ones hidden from parental view. Calorie Lab has calculated that an average kid on an average walk who bought a Snickers bar thinking he/she would "walk it off" by walking, would have to weigh 410 pounds to "walk it off"! See more here.
Check out why Stonyfield Farm has partnered with one of the best skateboarders in the business.
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In a surprising finding, it turns out children are seeing fewer food commercials on television today than they did in 1977. Today, children watch about 13 food advertisements a day on television, down from more than 18 in 1977. Of course, the new study didn’t look at all the other places kids can see print ads and commercials than were available in 1977—on video games and computers, and packaging even in schools, for example. The findings are being touted by the advertising industry as reason enough not to place restrictions on advertising to kids. “The decline in TV ads was proof that food marketers are not to blame for the steep rise in childhood obesity,” said Wally Snyder, president of the American Advertising Federation, which represents manufacturers and advertising agencies.
"Advertising is not the culprit, but lack of exercise and moderation in the diet are," Snyder said. Chairman of the FTC says it wouldn’t be wise to limit advertising but it also wouldn’t be wise for the food industry to just keep doing what they’re doing.
One third of what kids eat comes from pizza, candy and dessert.
Check out why Stonyfield Farm has partnered with one of the best skateboarders in the business.
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In Columbia, Missouri, and elsewhere in that state, school officials are armed with all sorts of data about rising obesity rates among school children, but they appear to be doing very little with the information. Like other places, obesity among children is on the rise in Columbia. One phys. ed. teacher laments the fact she had to discard a gymnastics unit because fifth graders didn’t have the basic strength skills to carry on. One private group, however, has jumped into the void and is offering Jump Into Action, a team-taught nutrition and physical education program with a goal of reducing Type Two diabetes among fifth-grade students. The program is in place in the 25 Missouri counties. Goals of the program are: Increase fruit and vegetable consumption to five or more servings a day; decrease consumption of sugar-added beverages; decrease the amount of time sitting in front of a computer or television screen to two hours or less; increase the consumption of milk, yogurt and cheese to four servings; and increase physical activity to at least 60 minutes. We tip our lids to the Jump Into Action organizers in Missouri!
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**Is there a baby in the house? Check out Baby Babble and Toddler Talk, to vent and join the conversation. Open 24/7, same as you.
