Tara Parker-Pope, January 25, 2010, The New York Times
Can something as simple as the timing of recess make a difference in a child’s health and behavior?
Some experts think it can, and now some schools are rescheduling recess — sending students out to play before they sit down for lunch. The switch appears to have led to some surprising changes in both cafeteria and classroom.
Schools that have tried it report that when children play before lunch, there is less food waste and higher consumption of milk, fruit and vegetables. And some …

Between them, Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey have worked on Wall Street, traveled the world and taught school from East Africa to Ecuador. Now they make lunch for a living.
Friends since they met in business school at the University of California, Berkeley, Ms. Richmond and Ms. Tobey founded Revolution Foods Inc. to ride a political and economic wave: surging support for healthier food in school cafeterias.
Federal nutrition guidelines require subsidized school lunches to meet benchmarks on calories and fat, but they do not require that foods be whole, local, …

BBC News, December 10
More than one in five children in England start their school life overweight or obese, NHS figures show.
What is more, by the end of primary school the rate rises to nearly one in three, the government’s child measurement programme showed.
Obesity levels were higher in London, the North East and West Midlands than elsewhere in 2008-9.
But the NHS Information Centre said there were no significant changes in the results from last year.
NHS chiefs warned the true levels of obesity were likely to be a little higher as the …

September 1, 2009, Nanci Hellmich, USA Today
The healthy choice should be the easy choice, says family physician Eduardo Sanchez.
To make it easier for children to eat healthfully and move more, local governments in towns and cities across the country need to help create a better environment, a new report says.

Children and their families should have access to grocery stores that offer plenty of healthful food such as fruits and vegetables, and schools shouldn’t be surrounded by fast-food restaurants. Children should be able to ride their bikes or walk safely to …

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, October 26, 2009
Researchers find that children’s cereals have 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber and 60 percent more sodium than cereals marketed to adults. In addition, companies are spending more than $156 million dollars a year to market these cereals directly to kids.
These findings are part of an extensive analysis of children’s cereals conducted by researchers at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity as part of the RWJF-funded Cereal FACTS (Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score) project. The results of …

Swooping in to save the kids from the evils of the junk food junkies, the all new comic book superhero, Super Nutricia, created by Inland Empire Health Plan IEHP will help fight childhood obesity and unhealthy eating among children.
This is the first ever female superhero from IEHPs squad of masked avengers that already includes Rad R

ider and Eradicator.Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090811/DC60167Super Nutricia is scheduled to launch her first mission at the annual Route 66 Rendezvous event on September 19 in downtown San Bernardino, complete with a live showdown including an array of …

The mother came out of the exam room to intercept me: she knew I would probably have to talk to her daughter about how she was gaining weight, she said, but please don’t use the word “fat,” or even “overweight.” Don’t make her feel bad about herself.
The girl was about 8, and when I plotted her growth chart, it was clear some balance had shifted over the past year, and her weight was increasing much too fast relative to her height. It was worth talking about.
But I was as conscious of …

Mary MacVean, June 8, 2009
The Assembly has passed a bill to set minimum standards for food in licensed child-care centers, requiring a vegetable to be part of lunch and supper and forbidding whole milk for children 2 or older.
The food children eat in kindergarten through 12th grade in public school is regulated for fat and salt content, among other things. But for many preschool children, there have been no such dietary rules.
“California enjoys a worldwide reputation for its sunny, healthy lifestyle,” said the bills author, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley D-Santa Monica. “Childhood …

U.S. kids are not only too heavy; they’re also out of shape, according to a new study of 5th and 7th grade students in Georgia.
Half didn’t reach minimum standards for healthy aerobic fitness, Dr. Kenneth E. Powell, a physician in private practice, and his colleagues found, while nearly a quarter didn’t make the grade in terms of muscle fitness, endurance or flexibility.
Powell and his team determined body mass index (BMI) and tested fitness and physical activity levels of 5,248 students from 93 schools across Georgia.
They found that 30 percent of …