Empowering Healthy Kids Blog

Are you a non-profit, Victorian, sporting club? You may want to consider applying for VicHealth’s Active Club Grants 2007. Grants of up to $2,500 are available.

What will be funded?

• Sports Injury Prevention Equipment
• Essential Equipment/Items
• Volunteer and Club Training
• Portable Sun Shade

Who can apply?

Applications will only be accepted from clubs/organisations that facilitate or
organise community-based sport and active recreation opportunities as one of their
primary functions.
Eligible organisations:

• Sporting organisations (eg, local sporting clubs and regional sports leagues
• or associations).
• Local active recreation organisations (eg, walking clubs, dance groups).
• Organisations that have the facilitation or organisation of community sport and
• active recreation opportunities as one of their primary functions.

Organisations must:

• be not for profit;
• be incorporated;
• be based in Victoria;
• be applying for activities taking place in Victoria;
• have satisfactorily acquitted any previous grants that have been received from
• VicHealth; and
• present applications in accordance with published program timelines and
• processes.

This is a great initiative, so make sure that you take advantage of it! Entries close 3 December 2007. Please see VicHealth’s site for more info.

Spotted a new game to help kids learn about nutrition (similar to our goals for a The Miniscules project I was working on a while back).

It’s free to play and available here.

Also see the interview on Geek.com with Ray Baxter, PhD, the Vice President of Kaiser Permanente’s Community Benefit.

Interesting research (Via Science Daily, Via British Medical Journal):

An education programme which successfully cut the level of obesity in children by teaching them about healthy eating and discouraging fizzy drinks was no longer effective three years after the intervention came to an end, according to a study published on the British Medical Journal website.

How they came up with this conclusion:

The Christchurch Obesity Prevention Project, also known as the “Ditch the Fizz” campaign, was run for a year in six junior schools in Southern England from August 2001. 644 children, aged between seven and eleven, took part. The project focussed on discouraging children from drinking fizzy drinks and promoting a healthy diet through four extra health education classes spread over the year.

At the end of the study the authors found significant differences in the proportion of overweight children in the control group and the intervention group.

Two years after the end of the study the researchers re-measured the childrens’ height, weight and Body Mass Index, converting them into standard scores (Z scores). The Z score takes into account the child’s age and gender and represents the deviation compared to an average child of the same gender and age.

They found the number of overweight children had increased in both groups although the prevalence was still higher in the control group. Three years later this gap was no longer significant.

Obesity is a very complex condition, say the authors, but they conclude: “It remains unclear whether specific interventions or those which focus on all aspects of the diet and physical activity are the most successful. Perhaps the true impact of any school based intervention can effectively only be evaluated if the interventions are continuous.”

While this is discouraging, we must continue to encourage researchers to look at the vast number of anti-obesity programmes out there and decipher those which don’t work and learn from the ones that do.

Michael Valos, from Deakin University, is conducting Toddler Feeding Study at Chadstone Shopping Centre tomorrow (Saturday 6 October 2007). If you are a parent of toddlers, Michael will have a booth set up to conduct the survey. It should take 20 - 25 minutes to complete.

New research from Columbia University Medical Center:

In a chart review of 1,713 children ages 1-5 years living in inner-city neighborhoods of New York City, they found that the risk of being overweight or obese significantly increased with each successive year of age, with the biggest increases in prevalence between the ages of 1 and 3 years.

By age 5, half of the children were overweight or obese. Boys were slightly more likely to be obese than girls.

So it looks like by setting up positive habits early, you can dramatically improve your child’s long-term health outcomes. However:

Additional research is needed about the events that occur during the critical age period in order to develop effective interventions aimed at reducing obesity. While the causes of this dramatic, early rise in obesity prevalence remain unknown, the Columbia researchers speculate that feeding behaviors may play a crucial role.

“The critical age period encompasses a major transition period for children, when they develop and establish food preferences and eating behaviors,” said Dr. Glassman, who is also a post-doctoral research fellow in the Primary Care Clinician Research Fellowship in Urban Community Health at Columbia University Medical Center.

She advises that pediatricians should screen early for obesity and offer advice to parents about the important role they play as their children move from a primarily milk-based diet of infancy to one consisting of a variety of solid foods. In order to help their children establish healthy eating patterns, parents need to think about the types of foods that they themselves eat and keep in the home, and how they approach mealtimes and the feeding (or overfeeding) of their children.

It will be interesting to see a longer term trend of these children to see if there is a link between the early childhood years and the prevalence of obesity as they continue to grow through adolescents and beyond.

The MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it!) scheme is experiencing good results from its programme:

The results of the first phases of the programme show, on average:

• Waist circumference reduced by over 2cms
• Physical activity up to over 11.5 hours a week
• Sedentary activity down by 5.5 hours per week
• Body Mass Index (BMI) down by 0.8
• Overall there were significant improvements to participants health and wellbeing

There are quite a few of these interventionist plans currently being launched around the world, so it is encouraging to see positive results. While these are the results from the first 3 years, it will be interesting to see if longer-term behaviour change is apparent. Personally, I like the approach they are taking: learning about themselves and setting goals, nutrition education, increasing physical activity and then actually “doing it” - rather than just learning the theory in the classroom.

I spotted this in Oakleigh:

I think we will find more of these “market driven” solutions popping up around local communities. By the way here are the details of the “Activate Kids” event:

Activate Kids
Tuesday 25th to Thursday 27th September 2007
11am and 1pm
“Healthy exercise and food classes for kids”
Tuesday: Yoga & Wicked Wraps
Wednesday: Pilates & Rockin’ Rolls
Thursday: Dancing & Smiley Sandwiches

Healthy foods
1. Give thirsty kids water and limit sugary drinks such as soft drinks, cordials and fruit juice drinks
2. Help young bones grow strong with 2-3 serves every day or low-fat milk, cheese or yoghurt
3. A variety of vegies add vitality - 5 serves a day will help kids thrive.
4. Grains are great for energy - shop for wholegrain and high-fibre foods.
5. Think healthy snacks - provide fruit, grains and low-fat dairy and limit chips, pastries and sweets.
Healthy habits
6. Start the day with breakfast - make sharing healthy meals part of your family routine.
7. Recreational screen time - switch off after 2 hours.
8. Help kids be active for at least 1 hour each day.
9. Show kids how to do it - healthy parents make health role models.
10. Shop smartly - be in charge of what goes in to your trolley.

This was taken from CSIRO’s Wellbeing Plan for Kids. It will be distributed as a fridge magnet to all primary school kids around Australia during September 2007.

UPDATE: Message from Australian Prime Minister John Howard:

Research from Dr. Pagnini from The NSW Centre for Overweight and Obesity:

… the study involving 32 mothers found mums were being made anxious because they were rewarded if their children were good eaters and criticised if their child was thin or a fussy eater.

Many mothers worry about their children being underweight and not eating enough, and mums spend a lot of time trying to get them to eat more.

A summary of Dr. Pagnini’s tips:

• Do not worry about preschoolers eating enough because
  encouraging children to eat more than they felt like could stop them developing a
  natural self-regulation of appetite;
• Switching to whole grain breads and low fat milk products;
• Offering water as a drink;
• Using small portion sizes;
• Letting their children see them enjoying healthy foods;
• Resisting the temptation to give children treats every day;
• Turning off the TV and enjoying some active play together is also
  beneficial;
• If parents have questions about any of these issues they can get help from
  their GP or an early childhood nurse.

The Age ran a piece on entrepreneur, Amanda Murphy, from Yum Mum:

With no business experience and three children, Amanda Murphy started Yum Mum two years ago. “I knew I wanted to have a home business so I could be with my children and it wasn’t until I fed my nine-month-old son Oliver a jar of baby food for the first time and he spat it out and then scraped it off his tongue that I knew what that business was going to be,” Murphy says.

She sells certified organic meals created for babies aged from nine months. Forget pureed pumpkin; Yum Mum’s Middle Eastern lamb pilaf, Tuscan bolognaise, vegetable macaroni, apricot Moroccan chicken and pumpkin and tomato risotto are nourishing children in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. Unlike baby foods sold in jars, Yum Mum is vacuum-sealed fresh food sold in the chilled section of supermarkets and delis.

Learning the business was a steady curve for Murphy, who was out of the workforce for 10 years. She says she now looks at supermarket food differently.

“I’ve learnt so much about the process of actually getting a food product to the shelf and the value of food with no chemicals and preservatives,” she says. “Yum Mum is organic because, apart from the wonderful flavour and nutritional quality of organic food, organic farming is kinder to the land and the animal. It’s so important that children have real food right from the start.”

And it makes economic sense.Organic industry lobby group Biological Farmers of Australia says the local market grows at 20 to 30 per cent a year, a similar rate to that in the US and Europe. Although she is focused on Australia, Murphy says exports are “definitely on the cards”.

One of our respondents to our survey on childhood obesity was into organic food. This ones for you!