Empowering Healthy Kids Blog

I just stumbled across Bulldog Interactive Fitness from Canada. It is a franchise operation that was started by a husband and wife team (Holly and James Bond). I think that we will continue to see more of these centres spring up around the world.

On a side note, I also noticed that Canadians get a tax rebate for enrolling their kids into fitness programs:

Children’s Fitness Tax Credit (Canada)
Budget 2006 introduced a federal tax credit to promote physical activity among children. Effective January 1, 2007, parents of young people under the age of 16 who register their children in programs that promote physical activity can claim a federal tax credit for up to $500 per year per child on registration fees and memberships.

It’s great to have a treadmill at home - sets a good example for the kids (provided it is actually used). Anyway, be careful:

SMALL children are getting their hands caught and their skin ripped off by home fitness treadmills

It’s great to see schools come up with innovative solutions to legislation. Last fall, Florida passed a bill to mandate that students from Kindergarten to Grade 5 required to do 150 minutes of exercise per week. As TampaBay.com reports, some schools are resorting to measuring their 150 minutes in 5 minute or even less exercise blocks. Here are some examples:

• When the law went into effect last fall, some — including Hillsborough — began counting 5-minute exercise breaks and short walks around campus as exercise.
• For five minutes, the kids practice clapping, flying, jumping, marching, lunging and high-fiving. Then the activity break ends.
• Choosing to stick to a plan that has allowed elementary kids to receive daily PE instruction for the past 30 years. The catch: They group several classes together and rely on PE assistants for supervision.

Here are two schools’ methods of meeting the targets:

A typical 30-minute PE session at Cross Bayou Elementary School

Walking from the classroom to the PE field: 3 minutes

Stretching/warming up: 5 minutes

Running a quarter mile: 4 minutes

Instructional time*: 15 minutes

Walking back to the classroom: 3 minutes

*This includes the teacher’s explanation of the activity and the activity itself, which could be passing a basketball, shooting hoops or kicking a soccer ball.

Dale Mabry Elementary: How one school fits in 150 minutes of PE for fourth-graders each week

PE class: 60 minutes

Teacher-directed PE: 60 minutes

Movement in classroom: 20 minutes

Health education: 10 minutes

Meal diaries, nutritional Web sites, activities about 5 minutes

My own opinion is that while this may not be was legislators had in mind, focussing more attention on physcial activity is good. But more importantly the 150 minute targets allow schools the freedom (but not necessarily the resources nor expertise in some cases) to pursue innovative and creative solutions for their students. It would be an interesting research study to see the outcomes of this legislature and the various methods that schools employ actually makes a difference on children’s health.

As opposed to Australia, a proposal to track the BMI of children gets knocked on the head:

The bill’s sponsor says the data would only have been used to shape efforts to fight childhood obesity, but the panel voted to strip it from a larger public health bill.

The sponsor, Representative Diane Loeffler of Minneapolis, says she did not set out to monitor individual children or make their status public in the schools. She says childhood obesity is an epidemic that’s threatening the health of children everywhere.

Opponents still feared the numbers could shame overweight children and teenagers. But the proposal is still alive for now in a Senate bill.

San Marcos students now have to pass high school fitness tests under a new California law:

The new law, which goes into effect with this year’s freshmen class, is geared toward students who have room for improvement on the statewide physical fitness test —- the so-called Fitnessgram.

The test is designed to measure categories such as muscle strength, endurance, flexibility and aerobic capacity, the body’s ability to generate energy with the use of oxygen.

Results of the test are reported each year in grades five, seven and nine, and are based on students’ performance in six tasks: curl-ups, trunk lifts, push-ups or pull-ups, shoulder stretches, body composition and a 1-mile run.

While students are required to take two years of physical education to graduate high school, the new law requires students who do not pass at least five of the six tasks on the test in ninth grade to continue to enroll in physical education until they pass. Physical education is not required after the sophomore year, but students can still take it as an elective.

New Australian health minister, Nicola Roxon, announced recently that, starting in 2009,  Body Mass Index (BMI) tests will be conducted on 4 year olds. While there is a lack of detail in this new policy, my immediate reaction is that it is a positive move ONLY if the results are confidential and use for statistical information only. We do not want to get into a situation where children a “branded” and stigmatised in schools.

This got me thinking (again) about the role of government in solving childhood obesity.  The role of government to educate and create an environment for people to make decisions for themselves. It is their role to create an environment so that the marketplace of ideas can flow freely and allow new innovative solutions to flourish. If, as a society, we decide to wait for a government solution,  organisations and individuals are discouraged from seeking their novel solutions as it becomes “the government’s problem.”

Most parents are aware of childhood obesity and can make informed decisions about their families health and wellbeing. Childhood obesity will not be solved by government “junk food” taxes and bans. It will be solved from the ground-up, from children, parents, schools, businesses and local communities. Let them figure out the solution.

I came across Texas Legislation Senate Bill 530, which broadly aims to:

1) Set a minimum physical activity level of 30 minutes per week or 225 minutes over a 2 week period from kindergarten to grade 8.

2) Measure the physical fitness of students in grade 3 through to grade 12, focussing on:

(A) aerobic capacity;
(B) body composition; and
(C) muscular strength, endurance, and flexibility.

Parents may also request for their child’s physcial assessment.

3) Results wil be analysed by the Texas Education Agency to compute correlations between:

(A)  student academic achievement levels;
(B)  student attendance levels;
(C)  student obesity;
(D)  student disciplinary problems; and
(E)  school meal programs.

This legislation looks like a step towards making physical fitness as important as academic achievement.