Bag the Junk brings a easy guide to being prepared for the new snack changes that start this 2014-15 school year. Good News – Healthier Rules for School Snack Food are Now in Place and We’ve Got the skinny on How They Can Work for You and Your Students! The USDA “Smart Snacks” rule applies to all foods sold for consumption at school that are not part of the national school breakfast and lunch programs (vending machines, a la carte items, school stores, fundraisers, etc.). Using the resources below can make changing your school’s food environment as easy as eating an apple. Top 5 Resources to help you prepare for new Smart Snacks rules: Find Smart Snacks guidelines HERE.
Find complete USDA Smart Snacks materials HERE.
To know whether a particular food ...
This report highlights how levels of physical activity differ by state. It also points out how states compare to each other in regards to environmental and policy strategies used to encourage physical activity. Things like: policy guidance on shared use agreements at the state level;
having access to parks, recreation centers, and sidewalks
living within 1/2 mile of a park;
increasing time spent doing moderate-vigorous physical activity;
requiring recess; and
getting kids to walk and bike to school are all recommended as ways to increase levels of physical activity. Access the full report ...
Studies show a 20% increase in skin cancer rates in Hispanics, many of who are misinformed about their risk and believe they are immune to the damaging effects of sun rays, the Latin Times reports. The Skin Cancer Foundation has launched a new public education campaign to inform Hispanics about sun protection. The campaign includes a Spanish-language website with various resources, information, and potentially life-saving tips to prevent skin cancer (melanoma), advise on warning signs, and promote early detection. The campaign also is bringing Spanish-language printed and other materials to Hispanic-serving clinics, community groups, and media. "There is a misconception in the Hispanic population that they are immune to skin cancer because of their skin, and thus, they are not ...
The Summer Nutrition Programs ensure that low-income children have access to healthy food throughout the summer. Most Summer Nutrition Programs occur in tandem with educational and enrichment programs that keep children learning, engaged, and safe during the summer months. The Summer Meals Act hopes to have a better integration of summer education and meals in programs that provide summer enrichment, as well as improve nutrition in rural, under-served, hard to reach areas throughout the US. You can find out more information on the legislation ...
U.S. immigration may result in increased smoking in Latinos and Asians, according to a new study reported by Science World Report. The study, led by Rice University, found that Latino immigrant men’s smoking prevalence was more than twice that of women’s (29.5 percent and 12.6 percent, respectively). Smoking prevalence among Asian immigrant men was more than four times that of Asian immigrant women (30.4 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively). For smoking frequency, Asian men on average smoked 2.5 more cigarettes per day than Asian women, compared with 1.5 more cigarettes per day that Latino men smoked than Latino women. The study also found that smoking increases with duration of U.S. residence among Asian immigrants (both prevalence and frequency) and among Latino immigrants ...
What issues affect the nation's 54 million Latinos? Several leading Latino-oriented organizations described the importance of various issues, including education, health care and immigration in a new report, Voxxi News reports. The report, called the American Latino Agenda Report and developed by the New American Alliance Institute (NAA Institute), was released this week. The report introduces several topics and offers recommendations for improvements. For example, in health, the National Hispanic Medical Association suggested focusing on these areas of needs: Educating Hispanics about the need to change lifestyles in order to increase healthy nutrition and physical activity through a variety of programs.
Increasing Hispanics representation in the federal ...
For the first time ever, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students than white students enrolled, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic children, the Associated Press reports. White students are still most populous, but their numbers dipped just below 50% for the first time. Here is the racial/ethnic breakdown of students, according to National Center for Education Statistics: 49.8% White
25% Hispanic
15% Black
5% Asian
5% Other "The shift creates new academic realities, such as the need for more English language instruction, and cultural ones, meaning changes in school lunch menus in the Southwest and elsewhere to include tortillas and other offerings to reflect students’ tastes," according to the Associated ...
The graduation rate at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) is 11% behind that of traditional institutions, and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) lag 7% behind. These stats don't look good, but they're not the whole story. Researchers found that HBCUs and HSIs often deal with the significant challenge of limited institutional resources and having a student body that is less academically prepared than traditional schools and tend to receive less financial aid, according to a study in Research in Higher Education, which examined data from minority-serving institutions (MSIs) in Texas, Futurity reports:
These and other differences in student population skew the statistics and unfairly put MSIs in a bad light...
...At the same time, MSIs often function with limited ...
Did you know Latinos suffer more from certain diseases? For example, Latinos are 45% more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer, 65% more likely to be diabetic, and six times as likely to have tuberculosis than Whites. These health disparities are captured in a new infographic. The infographic, from Families USA, which works to heighten health care for all Americans, urges people to "work together to improve our health care system to make it high-quality, comprehensive, affordable, and accessible for ...
