Empowering Healthy Kids Blog

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have released their latest findings from their 2006 survey of schools across the US:

• States prohibiting schools from offering junk foods in vending machines increased from 8 percent in 2000 to 32 percent in 2006, and the percentage of school districts doing so increased from 4 percent to 30 percent.
• Schools selling water in vending machines or school stores increased from 30 percent in 2000 to 46 percent in 2006.
• States that required elementary schools to provide students with regularly scheduled recess increased from 4 percent in 2000 to 12 percent in 2006 and the percentage of school districts with this requirement increased from 46 percent to 57 percent.
• Schools with policies that prohibited all tobacco use in all school locations, including off-campus school-sponsored events, increased from 46 percent in 2000 to 64 percent in 2006.
• Schools that sold cookies, cake, or other high-fat baked goods in vending machines or school stores decreased from 38 percent in 2000 to 25 percent in 2006.
• Schools that offered salads a la carte increased from 53 percent in 2000 to 73 percent in 2006.
• The percentage of schools that offered deep fried potatoes (French fries) a la carte decreased from 40 percent to 19 percent.

The CDC then offerred the following areas for improvement:

• Seventy-seven percent of high schools still sell soda or fruit drinks that are not 100 percent juice, and 61 percent sell salty snacks not low in fat in their vending machines or school stores.
• Only 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle schools, and 2 percent of high schools provided daily physical education or its equivalent for the entire school year for students in all grades.
• Overall, 22 percent of schools did not require students to take any physical education.
• Currently, 36 percent of schools still do not have policies prohibiting tobacco use in all locations at all times.

Encouraging. Looks like the increased childhood obesity awareness is making a difference.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am and is filed under usa, survey, childhood obesity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.