Looking for Gold Standard information to help you be the best parent you can be when it comes to your kid’s health and wellness? Whether you’re looking for basic child health info or detailed guidance about parenting issues, look no further than HealthyChildren.org, which is the only parenting web site backed by 60,000 pediatricians. You’ll find information regarding the American Academy of Pediatrics’ programs and activities. In it, you’ll find evidence-based policies and guidelines, publications, and other child health resources. When you get your info from the Healthy Children website you can be confident that what you’ll get has been examined by the nation’s leading child health experts and that the info has its roots in science.
Posts Tagged ‘nutrition’
Healthy Kids
April 30th, 2013Data Shows Progress… but Obesity is Still Rising
March 19th, 2013
Here’s some good news about the battle against the obesity epidemic: national data shows the average intake of calories has decreased for boys and girls over the last 12 years. While the news is encouraging, our work to promote nutrition and physical activity to reduce obesity remains important. Reducing obesity is a Winnable Battle both nationally and in Arizona.
There are lots of resources to help you and your family eat healthier meals and become more active. Check out the Arizona Nutrition Network’s Champions for Change for simple ways to eat better. Find more ideas for healthy eating and active living at ChooseMyPlate.gov, where you can sign up for healthy recipes that are emailed every week.
Show Your Love
February 14th, 2013
Valentine’s Day isn’t just a day of romance, flowers and candy. The CDC Preconception Health and Health Care Initiative launched a campaign asking all women of childbearing age to Show Your Love by taking good care of themselves. It’s a national initiative to educate women and couples on the importance of preconception health. Preconception health refers to a woman’s health during the years she can have a child. A mother’s health before she gets pregnant can affect the health of her baby.
Women who’d like to become pregnant are urged to “Show Your Love” to your future baby by adopting healthy behaviors now. Women who are not planning a pregnancy now are encouraged to “Show Your Love” to themselves so they’ll be healthy and have a fulfilling future. About half of all pregnancies in our country are unplanned, which increases the chances of having a poor birth outcome such as preterm birth, low birth weight, high birth weight, or stillbirth. Many women become pregnant when they’re not in the best health or while engaging in behaviors that could harm a pregnant woman or her baby. It makes sense to be healthy at all stages of life.
The Show Your Love website includes posters, educational videos, TV PSAs and health checklists for use by health care providers and community partners who want to educate the women and couples they work with about the importance of preconception health. Preconception health is impacted by a number of health issues addressed by various ADHS programs – chronic disease, oral health, nutrition, physical activity, smoking, STD’s, immunizations and mental health. The Bureau of Women’s and Children’s Health website includes additional preconception health tools. Also, please feel free to email the Bureau at: preconceptionhealth@azdhs.gov .
Snack Time
February 12th, 2013
We’re one step closer to winning the battle of childhood obesity. The USDA just released the new “Smart Snacks in School” proposal to provide national standards geared towards increasing healthy food options in vending machines and snack bars. As required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the USDA is striving to help improve the health and well-being of our children by creating nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools.
The new proposed standards have been established using evidence-based research, existing standards currently implemented by schools, and healthy food and beverages already available in the marketplace. The proposal identifies food allowances such as snacks with 200 calories or less, water, low-fat milk, plain or flavored fat-free milk, and 100% juice for middle and high schools. The new proposed standards for healthier foods will impact all foods sold during the school day. Kids will be able to purchase healthy meals, snacks, and beverages once the rules are final. The proposed rules will not apply to after-school hours, weekends, or off-campus fundraising events.
Mealtime
February 7th, 2013Does when you eat make a difference in how much you weigh? A new study in the International Journal of Obesity indicates eating late may make it less likely you will lose weight as quickly. The five-month study was done in Spain and included 420 people in a weight loss program using the Mediterranean Diet. People in the study were grouped into early-eaters and late-eaters (lunch before/after 3pm). The late-lunch eaters lost less weight even though their calorie intake and other factors (like amount of sleep) were similar in the two groups.
Does this mean you should eat your big meal earlier in the day? Maybe and maybe not. Remember, the people in the study were in a supervised weight loss program and eating a diet rich in good-for-you fats (like olive oil) and with lots of fruits and vegetables. For you, a good place to start is taking a look at how much and when you eat along with how much physical activity you get each day. Try out the Choose MyPlateSupertracker. It’s a great tool to use to track your progress on eating healthy and moving more. You can switch up the size and timing of when you eat and see if being an “early-eater” makes a difference for you.
Selling Food
January 16th, 2013
Food marketing to children and teens is a major public health concern. Earlier this year, the Walt Disney Company announced it will no longer accept advertisements for junk food on its child-directed television, radio, and online sites. Disney also updated its nutrition standards for foods that can be advertised to children.
The food and beverage industry spends $2 billion per year advertising food to children. Kids aged 2-11 years old see an average of 13 food ads a day, mainly promoting unhealthy foods. This contributes to our country’s obesity epidemic; one in every three children is overweight or obese. To see some of the best and the worst examples of advertising food to children, check out the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity — Food Marketing Practices.
Food marketing can make the job for parents harder or it can be used to promote healthy eating. In a recent study by Cornell University, children chose apples over cookies when Elmo stickers were placed on the apples. (The Elmo sticker increased the consumption of apples, though, did not have an effect when placed on the cookies.)
Our nutrition education programs like the Arizona Nutrition Network and WIC do a good job of promoting healthy foods but are small compared to industry efforts. The Food Marketing Workgroup (FMW) is made up of partners like the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the American Heart Association, the National PTA, and other organizations. They are working together to eliminate harmful food marketing, particularly marketing aimed at people most vulnerable to obesity. The FMW is now urging Nickelodeon to stop marketing junk food to kids. To find out how you can be part of this action, visit the FMW website.
Healthier Eating is a SNAP
November 6th, 2012
Many of you have heard how I’d like to see the USDA’s food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) hard-wire better nutrition into the program by beginning to include nutritious food inventory criteria for SNAP vendors. To help make the case, we contracted with the ASU School of Nutrition & Health Promotion to write a White Paper that outlines evidence-based strategies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of SNAP including: 1) improving access to healthy foods to provide better choices; 2) incentivize purchase of healthy foods; restricting access to unhealthy foods; and 3) maximizing education to more effectively reach a larger population of SNAP participants.
Our own Karen Sell and Punam Ohri-Vachaspati from ASU presented the PowerPoint at the top of our SNAP Reform webpage in San Francisco at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting. The PPT summarizes the White Paper called Policy Considerations for Improving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Making a case for Decreasing the Burden of Obesity which was also distributed at the conference. We’re getting some traction!
Even Healthier AZ Preschools on the Way
October 23rd, 2012AZ was selected to be one of only six states to participate in a new national initiative to help preschools to adopt evidence-based practices in nutrition, breastfeeding support, physical activity, and “screen time” policies and practices. The project begins this month when a company called Nemours (that’s who’s been hired by the CDC) begins establishing and training state teams to lead preschool quality improvement learning collaboratives. Nemours will provide ongoing technical assistance for participating child care providers, and provide access to tools, resources, materials, and curricula. This nicely augments and complements the training and technical assistance we provide through our Empower standards.
We’ll be notifying the other major partner agencies that will be involved in this and provided letters of support next week like First Things First. I suspect it was the Empower Program that brought us this national recognition. Jeanette Shea and Sheila Sjolander had presented Empower on a panel with Nemours at an Association of Maternal and Child Health Program conference a couple of years ago. Congratulation to our entire Empower team!
Improving Physical Activity & Nutrition for Folks with Special Needs
October 10th, 2012Special Olympics Arizona’s (SOAz) has been a core partner for improving the health of folks with disabilities in Arizona for a long time. They’ll have an opportunity to take their mission even further as a result of our new partnership between Special Olympics and our Office for Children with Special Health Care Needs to better integrate kids with special health care needs and developmental disabilities into community based sports and recreational and wellness activities like nutrition, physical activity, injury prevention and health advocacy. The initiative tackles and nicely integrates our Winnable Battle of promoting nutrition and physical activity, and the Title V priority of promoting inclusion of children with special health care needs in all aspects of life.
The new grant award will fund Special Olympics Arizona’s (SOAz) about $440K to execute an evidence-based program called Healthy LEAP (Lifestyle, Education and Practice). It’s a nationally recognized Health Promotion curriculum that focuses on nutrition, physical activity, injury prevention and health advocacy. The new contract builds on the existing capacity of Special Olympics to provide quality physical activity and healthy lifestyle activities for children with cognitive impairment and expand their capacity for collecting and reporting data regarding participant outcomes. Nice leverage point… congratulations!
