According to a recent article, vending sales have declined by one percent to $4.5 billion in 2014. This is a great advancement in healthier choices for most schools and cities, that are changing vending machine options to encourage healthier foods. However, not all vending machines are made the same, many include highly processed foods that are high in sodium and sugar. Working on the future of vending machine sales growth, is PepsiCo Inc. with their new marketing for vending machines, the Hello Goodness Brand. Thier aim is to help bypass the many health concerns that schools and cities across the nation are concerned about with soda and candy as being the main options in vending machines. The new machines are planned to hold more "healthy" options, including Naked Juice, Lays Oven ...
In November 2015, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy visited John C. Fremont High School's Gardening Apprenticeship Program. The schools program encourages students to learn how to grow healthy foods and utilize the foods towards cooking healthy dishes. The program supports healthy initiatives in Latino inner city neighborhoods like Los Angeles (48.4% Latino) that are less likely to have access to fresh foods and are dealing with high rates of childhood obesity. Students involved in the 12-week after-school gardening apprenticeship program learn to grow food and cook healthy dishes. The students enjoy a 1.5-acre site that holds the students fresh vegetables like, potatoes, peas and beets. Many of the students enjoy trying the new foods and learning about new vegetables they had never ...
Obesity can have serious ramifications for kids' cognitive development and affect school attendance. Did you know, regular participation in physical activity has academic performance benefits? Because children spend so much time at school, schools have a unique opportunity to help children become more healthy and active. Programs that support daily physical education and regular activity breaks during the school day can help increase physical activity, improve academic performance, and improve classroom behavior among students. A new Active Kids Learn Better infographic has now been translated into Spanish, from Active Living ...
Walking down the grocery store aisle is hard when there are temptations for junk foods and sodas on discount, but what if milk or apples were on sale? A new study was developed to analyze healthy food promotions and how they could possibly impact consumers purchasing power for healthier foods. Researchers developed and analyzed an Eat Right-Live Well campaign placed in supermarkets where healthier foods were promoted through signage, product labeling, in-store taste testings, employee training and nutrition education. The campaign was analyzed through sales data from two supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods in Baltimore across a three year period. Researchers from Bloomberg School of Public Health, John Hopkins 's Carey Business School and Center for a Liveable future saw a ...
Studies have shown over-consumption of sugary beverages is linked to health risks like diabetes and obesity. Healthier options are a must for kids menu's. Helping parents and kids to make the easy choice the healthy choice when dining out, the company behind Applebee's and IHOP restaurants, has decided to completely remove the option of soda on their kid's menus. This is the first family-dining restaurant to promote and incorporate this change throughout their national chain of restaurants. Organizations like Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), MomsRising, the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity (Rudd Center) and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, along with many other organizations support have made these changes possible. They have ...
Can bullying affect children's weight, health, and future? Duke Medicine researchers recently reported from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (UNC), that students who bullied their peers were twice as likely to display symptoms of bulimia, such as bingeing and purging. Findings from a database with more than two decades of health information on participants enrolled at age 9 reported that children who were victims of bullying were generally at risk for eating disorders, but reports also showed that children that were the bullies also had the highest prevalence of anorexia symptoms (22.8% vs. 5.6 % of those not involved in bullying.) Kids who are overweight may also be at a higher risk for being bullied or being the child who feels insecure and bullies other ...
You may have heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and a new research from Cardiff University finds a direct link between kids who eat a quality breakfast and their educational attainment. The landmark study reveals that students who ate breakfast were twice as likely to have higher academic outcomes. The study looked at 5,000 students ages 9 to 11 years of age from more than 100 primary schools. Researchers examined the longitudinal effects of the link between breakfast consumption and educational outcomes. The study also showed significant differences of educational performance between students who ate sweets or crisps versus students who ate fruit and vegetables, revealing that eating sweets for breakfast had no positive impact on educational ...
How can one family have an impact on reducing obesity in their school and beyond? Just look at the Surani teen sisters of Corpus Christi, Texas. After learning that their city had been named the fattest in the nation and how obesity is a huge health threat among children, the three girls wanted to take action They, with the help of their parents and others, created several programs to improve children’s health, including the iConquer program to help kids beat obesity by achieving healthy lifestyles starting from the early ages of 3 to 6 years old.
Teen Sisters Aim for Better Health
Fifteen-year-old Zoya Surani, along with sisters Sara (19) and Saherish (16), grew up in a household where healthy choices were commonplace. Their father, a pulmonologist, and mother, a respiratory ...
What if fast food meals for kids were considered more nutritious? Researchers from New York University (NYU) studied kids' meals by looking at over 358 fast food receipts which detailed over 400 purchases of kids' meals. After calculating what those meals would look like with a set of healthy nutritional standards, researchers summed up that there would have been a nine percent drop in calories for kids if the fast food meals purchased were up to their standards. This may not seem like much, but Dr. Brian Elbel, the lead author of the study and associate professor in the department of population health at NYU, said in a recent article, that these changes on fast food kids' meals would be a step in the right direction to help fight against childhood obesity. The new bill purposed ...
