Posted by kathryn in Nutrition

US Food Policy reports on the anti-childhood obesity programme in Somerville, MA. Called Shape Up Somerville, it’s an example of what happens when a whole community joins together to tackle this problem.

A wide range of measures have been set in motion, offering a school, parent and community programme that comes at the issue from several angles:

• By improving the food served in school canteens
• Including healthy eating as part of the school curriculum
• Encouraging after school clubs to offer better food and include more physical activity
• Working with local restaurants to improve healthy meal options and then advertising the list of those taking part in the programme
• Providing information to parents on physical activity and healthy snack options
• Providing information on safe walking routes and opportunities for kids to walk to school
• Taking the kids on field trips to local organic farms and education on vegetables

As the Wall Street Journal reports:

The Somerville program, designed primarily by Dr.Economos and fellow researchers at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition, offers a surprising blueprint. It didn’t force schoolchildren to go on diets. Instead, the goal was to change their environment with small and inexpensive steps. Dr.Economos, a specialist in pediatric nutrition and the mother of two school-age children, has long believed that the battle against obesity can’t be fought at the dinner table alone but requires social and political changes.

I love the way this programme takes on the problem of childhood obesity in such an innovative and well-rounded way. All have a role to play and all have a say in how the programme is run. The opinions and buy-in of parents and the local community are valued, while the kids also have a say. For example, each month a vegetable is featured in the canteen, with taste tests available at lunch-time. The kids then get to vote on whether that vegetable is used in the monthly school menu.

While individual parents play a vital role in maintaining the health of their child, it’s unfortunate that the local environment can work against those measures.

If your child’s school canteen is full of junk, local city planning makes walking impossible and there’s little nutrition education at school, then parents have their work cut out for them and you’re battling to make physical activity and healthy eating part of the normal daily routine.

As US Food Policy notes:

It can seem impossible for an ordinary parent to improve his or her family’s nutrition and physical activity, when every aspect of the outside environment undermines the effort. The Shape Up Somerville program . . offers an appealing vision of a whole community working together to change that environment.

17 May, 2007