Many cities are being more thoughtful in the amount of sugar that is in food, even purposing soda taxes, or sugary beverage warning labels to decrease sugars found in many convenient food and beverages options throughout stores and restaurants. According to reports from YouGov, some cities are more concerned with sugar consumption than others, noting reports on soda's and other sugar-filled products to add to health risks like obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. The data shows the percent of people in each city that say they are concerned about sugar levels in the food they consume, with Denver at the highest percent concerned of sugar levels, 50%, and the lowest concerned city about sugar as Houston at 29%. The data also reported the cities that consume the highest amount of ...
A new program called Students for Nutrition and Exercise (SNaX) is helping obese students in Southern California have healthier weights for longer periods of time. According to a recent article, SNax combined school-wide environmental changes, encouragement fo healthy eating, healthy foods in cafeterias and peer-led education and marketing to help students change their body mass index (BMI). Over 1,368 students heights and weights were assessed before and after two years of the program in over five schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District where thirty percent of the students were classified as obese at the start of the program. Two years later students showed a "significant decline" in BMI, around nine pounds lower in body weight, according to the article. The ...
Advocate and parent Theresa Turco wants healthier meals for her student's district. Speaking out and giving ideas, while passing out a menu, Turco explained in a recent news article that meals were too focused on unhealthy items like pizza, mozzarella sticks, and nachos. Turco offered up suggestions at a Board of Education meeting on May 224th, 2016, asking about doing surveys in English and Spanish to help figure out what parents and students would like to see on the school's menu. She also suggested affordable ways to incorporate more fresh foods into the school's food environment through taste-tests, salad and smoothie bars, and working with programs like USDA's Farm to School and Chef to School for resources and training. Turco knows that healthy eating is better for ...
According to a local news article, by this summer local convenient stores and large chain stores who sell food in the city of Minneapolis must offer healthier fresh food options. Most corner stores throughout the nation offer junk foods, that are usually high in sodium, added sugars and low in nutritious benefit- an unhealthy food environment for Latinos- who are currently reported to have the highest rates of obesity in the city (31.7% of Latino Adults Obese) and the overall nation. This new law is the first of it's kind in the nation, hoping to help combat diabetes, obesity, and other diet-related health risks by offering more convenient access and healthier foods throughout the city's corner stores and convenience stores. The law asks businesses to stock protein items, milk, ...
In the San Antonio, Texas area (69% Latino) families, health care leaders like Dr. Mark Gilger, and philanthropy groups like the Goldsbury Foundation are exploring what healthy and culturally fun Latino meals look like with the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio’s new Culinary Health Education for Families (CHEF) program. Aiming to be a new culinary health model for families needing help in preventing diet-related disease such as childhood diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, the goal of the program is to provide San Antonio residents with tools, resources, and education to lead healthier lives and encourage healthy weights for children.
EMERGENCE
Awareness/Learn: Dr. Mark Gilger, pediatrician-in-chief at the Children’s Hospital in San Antonio, has seen first-hand a local and ...
What's a good way to make sure students eat the new healthy foods schools are trying to implement across the nation? Taste Tests! A school district in South Carolina, Laurens 56 school district, has worked with kids, offering taste tests to try the new healthy school food swaps, before putting them on the school menu. Now new favorites in the lunchroom include collards and broccoli! All items are taste-tested, and given feedback from kids before approved, to make sure students enjoy new items like the chicken fajita wraps. Cindy Jacobs, the Child Nutrition Director for the district, worked from the very beginning making sure teachers and students saw the importance of the new nutrition standards, and asked students to get creative by making their own lunch menus under the ...
According to recent local news, kids in Arizona schools that have school garden produce will now get to crunch into their fresh-cut carrots. Existing law required that the Department of Health Services adopt regulations to ensure all food and or drink being sold at retail and provided for consumption be free from dirt, or disease- causing organisms. The new law just passed this month that would exempt fruits and vegetables grown in school gardens to be able to be washed and eaten on-site for immediate consumption. There were opposals of the bill, stating that kids could be at health risks, however, physician and House Minority Leader Eric Meyer said in the recent article that he has never known of any cases when kids would get sick from eating fresh fruits and ...
The Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) proposal is being reintroduced to help invest in better nutrition and more physical education for schools as well as create healthier communities in Illinois. The proposal was put into motion in Springfield, Ill, in May 2016, by the bipartisan group of state legislators looking to help fund Medicaid and invest in the health of their communities. Estimated to raise over six million dollars a year, the HEAL act would tax sugary drinks at a penny-per-ounce and go to support low-income and least healthy communities to have farmers markets, healthy food access, bike lanes, parks, and sidewalks.
CEO of the Illinois Public Health Institute and Executive Director of the Illinois Alliance to Prevent Obesity said in a press release, "Obesity costs the ...
In Contra Costa County, half of CalFresh recipients are children. CalFresh is a federally funded program, formerly called Food Stamps that helps families and children put nutritious foods on their tables daily and helps to prevent household hunger and reduce the greater risks for obesity, diabetes, and other diseases. May is “CalFresh Awareness Month,” where organizations and groups like the First 2 Contra Costa through the Family Economic Security Partnership work to increase CalFresh use and awareness of CalFresh benefits to the community. The coalition is led by the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano County and includes the Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department (EHSD), the Multi-Faith Action Coalition, the Ensuring Opportunity Campaign, and other ...
