KidFit Online

One of the biggest challenges to being more physically active for many Americans is the amount of sedentary time children and families spend in front of screens—TV, computer, video games, DVDs, and more.

Did you know?
According to the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation’s survey, “Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8–18 Year Olds,” March 2005:

• Every day, on average, 8–18-year-olds spend:
• Nearly four hours watching TV, videos, DVDs, and prerecorded shows
• Just over one hour on the computer
• About 50 minutes playing video games.
• Two-thirds of 8–18-year-olds have TVs in their bedrooms and own video game players, and nearly one-third have computers in their bedrooms.
• Children and teens who have TVs in their rooms spend almost 1½ hours or more a day watching TV than their peers without TVs in their rooms.

It’s time to wean the screen

Parents and caregivers not only set the example for their children in their levels of physical activity, but they also set the rules for use of the TV and other screens, including DVDs, video games, and computers.

The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation survey, “Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8–18 Year Olds,” also found that:

• About half (53 percent) of all 8–18-year-olds said their parents gave them no rules about TV watching.
• Nearly half (46 percent) said they do have rules but only 20 percent said the rules are enforced most of the time.
• Most important, youth with TV rules that are enforced report two hours less daily media exposure than in homes without this supervision.

Setting and agreeing on a certain number of hours each day of “screen time” is important. Health experts recommend two hours or less a day that is not work- or homework-related time, such as watching documentary films or doing research or writing on a computer.
For tips on family-friendly and active ways to reduce screen time, visit the Live It section.

Part of keeping your kids healthy is being smart when it comes to their safety. There are a number of ways kids and families can “play it safe” during everyday activities- whether it be bike riding, after-school sports, on the playground, or in the neighborhood.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Denise Nero
www.fitnessandkids.com

Getting America’s children to exercise has never been more difficult as the new boob-tube generation slouches in front of TVs, or sits for hours, mesmerized behind shoot-out video and computer games.

However, it is possible to foster a regular exercise pattern for children from an early age, with simple activities that are more “fun” than “exercise.”

America’s Pastimes
Back in the day, kids played hopscotch and tag and didn’t know that it qualified as exercise! Reviving America’s pastimes could be an easy way to promote physical fitness. Hopscotch improves balance and coordination, while the constant stop-go running in a healthy game of tag elevates the heart rate to more efficiently burn calories. Jumping rope is another American favorite that has fallen by the wayside. The regular interval in jumping rope pumps the heart steadily, and is an efficient form of aerobic exercise. Read the rest of this entry »

For kids, playing outside in the hot summer heat may stir up quite an appetite. Enjoying a nice big ice cream cone or something from the ice cream man could be very tempting. To avoid such temptations there are many alternatives for a healthy, refreshing snack for children and even adults to enjoy. Here are some ideas that kids could even help with: Read the rest of this entry »

By Dr. Walt Larimore
www.AllProDad.com

Dr. Walt Larimore discusses the crisis that overweight children face–that overweight children are far more likely to become overweight or obese adults. Larimore explains that in order to keep Generation Y away from becoming “Generation XL,” we as parents need to lead by example. Read the rest of this entry »

Omnibus Appropriations Bill Calls for Study, Broadens Scope
By Ira Teinowitz

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — One little bit of language in the omnibus appropriations bill signed today could shift the government’s focus on food marketing and childhood obesity from kids under 12 to everyone under 18, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of dollars of food, beverage and fast-food advertising on TV.

Besides funding government agencies and a number of pork-barrel projects, the bill signed by President Barack Obama today calls for several government studies, including one examining whether the government should set standards for determining which foods are healthy and appropriate to market to youths as old as 17.

Late Tuesday, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., one of the study’s sponsors, inserted a statement in the Congressional Record indicating that the under-17 language should be considered a mistake. “I think it would be more appropriate to limit the scope … to children under 12,” he said. The legislation, though, still has original language.

Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, was the other sponsor for the study. His communications director, Kate Cyrul, took a different tack. “Childhood obesity is on the rise and nearly at an epidemic proportion. And we know the obesity rate does not end with children [who are] 13. It affects all school-age children,” she said. “Considering the health risks that are involved and the potential impact on our nation as a whole, it would be irresponsible to only focus on a portion of school-age youth.”

Call for research
The bill calls for the Federal Trade Commission, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Secretary of Agriculture to establish an “Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children,” according to a report attached to the legislation. “The Working Group is directed to conduct a study and develop recommendations for standards for the marketing of food when such marketing targets children who are 17 years old or younger or when such food represents a significant component of the diets of children,” it says. Further, the “Working Group will determine the scope of the media to which such standards should apply,” asking that the group report back to Congress by July 15, 2010.

“This proposal is completely unnecessary,” said Scott W. Openshaw, director-communications for the Grocer Manufacturers Association. He said the FTC is monitoring the effectiveness of the industry initiative.

“Taxpayer dollars and agency time could be made much better use of. Besides, the proposal — the way it is written — not only reinvents the wheel, it does so poorly with broad, misdirected language that goes far beyond marketing to children. Too far.”

Many marketers have already reined in their food and fast-food advertising. Under Capitol Hill pressure, major food and fast-food companies launched the Children’s Food & Beverage Initiative in 2006 and altered their ad mix and their products to sell healthier products to children under 12. Candy-makers pulled their ads from such media.

Standards needed
There has been some criticism, including from the Federal Trade Commission, that even as the voluntary industry action led to healthier products being advertised to children, each company was creating its own standard for what healthy meant. In other words, the government should step in and set standards.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, for one, is happy about the language in the bill. “I think it’s terrific,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for CSPI. She noted that the FTC has urged development of more uniform standards for what foods are and aren’t appropriate to advertise. “This would set up a mechanism to do that.”

She also said the teen audience could be more at risk. “In a lot of way, teens are more vulnerable than younger kids because they have more options to make choices out of their parents’ supervision,” she said.

Food groups concerned
Food manufacturers and advertising groups, however, were concerned. They traditionally have said that there are no good or bad foods, and that any food can be fine with the right diet and exercise regiment.

Dan Jaffe, exec VP of the Association of National Advertisers, said setting standards for what should be advertised and then extending the focus to teens is troublesome.

“When you start to look at rules that would affect kids almost old enough to vote, it could raise major issues,” he said. “There is a good food-bad food approach and if they are going to say some specific food is not OK to advertise, it would be unconstitutional.”

The omnibus bill also calls for a second study, this one by the FTC, of “virtual-reality web programs” and whether legislation is needed to prevent minors from accessing explicit content on the sites.

The legislation does have one increase in government advertising. Under the bill, the youth anti-drug advertising program of the White House gets increased to $70 million from $60 million.

Back to school doesn’t have to mean back to the same old sandwich.

By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD

WebMD Weight Loss Clinic – Expert Columnn

For many kids, including my own, back to school not only means back to books and homework, but back to eating sandwiches for lunch. If you’ve got kids who don’t like buying lunch at school, the whole sandwich scene can get pretty boring by October. But it’s not always easy to think of new brown bag lunch ideas.

I’m forever trying out different options in the hope of keeping lunch interesting and desirable. Hey, I’ve had lunch duty at my daughter’s school — I’ve seen what kids really eat and what they give or throw away.

Read the rest of this entry »

Children need at least an hour of moderate to strenuous physical activity every day to stay healthy, according to experts. But many kids just aren’t getting that much exercise. And most groups are unanimous on the prime culprit: sedentary entertainment, meaning the temptations of the TV, computer, and video games.

So, your first step toward encouraging a healthy level of physical exercise should be to limit your children’s TV and screen time. Beyond that, here are some tips from the experts on how to help your children (and yourself) stay active:

• Make an exercise schedule. Exercise doesn’t have to involve a rigid routine. But it’s a good idea to schedule a regular time for exercise each day. You and your kids will be more likely to get up and get moving if you’ve set aside a specific time for physical activity.
• Support physical-education programs in the schools, which may be reduced or receive less emphasis in some school systems. Communicate to your child’s teachers and administrators your belief that physical education (PE) is an important part of the curriculum.
• Plan your vacations, weekends, and days off around fitness fun. Plan a bike ride, take an invigorating hike along nature trails, or pack a picnic lunch and head for the park for a family game of Frisbee.
• Make use of community resources. When it comes to finding fitness opportunities, take advantage of what your community has to offer. Join the local YMCA or sign up for tennis or other lessons through your Parks and Recreation Department. Look for water aerobics classes and golf lessons at local swimming pools and golf courses.
• Get the whole neighborhood involved. Organize neighborhood fitness activities for children and their parents. Softball games, soccer matches, and jump-rope contests are fun for kids and adults.
• Dance! Children of all ages love to dance. Crank up the music, show your kids the dances that were popular when you were a teen, and let them teach you their favorite dance moves.
• Expose your child to a variety of physical fitness activities and sports. Your child will likely find the combination of activities or sports that are most enjoyable for him or her and will not become bored of one activity.
• Let your kids take turns being the fitness director for your family. They’ll have more fun when they’re allowed to choose the activity, and they’ll enjoy putting their parents and siblings through their paces.

There are some gentle ways parents can nudge their kids toward more healthful eating habits. Here are a few thoughts from nationally known nutrition experts on how to get kids to go from being picky eaters to people with sound, varied diets:

• Avoid a mealtime power struggle. One of the surest ways to win the battle but lose the war is to engage in a power struggle with your child over food, says Jody Johnston Pawel, LSW, CFLE, author of The Parent’s Toolshop. With power struggles, you’re saying, “Do it because I’m the parent” and that’s a rationale that won’t work for long, she says. But if your child understands the why behind the rules, those values can lay the groundwork for a lifetime of sound food choices.

• Let kids participate. Get a stepstool and ask your kids to lend a hand with easy tasks in the kitchen, says Sal Severe, PhD, author of How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too. “If they participate in helping to make the meal, they are more likely to want to try it,” he says.
• Don’t label. Severe reminds parents that, more often than not, kids under 5 are going to be selective eaters. “Being selective is actually normal,” says Elizabeth Ward, MS, RD. She prefers the term “limited eater” to the more negative term “picky.”
• Build on the positives. “When I sit down with parents, we’ll often find that their child actually does eat two or three things from each food group,” says Ward. Just as children can get comfort from reading the same story over and over, they enjoy having a set of “predictable” foods. “Even though they aren’t getting a wide variety of foods, they are actually doing OK nutritionally,” says Ward. When the child goes through a growth spurt and has a bigger appetite, use that opportunity to introduce new foods, she recommends.
• Expose, expose, expose. Ward says a child needs to be exposed to a new food 10 to 15 times before he or she will accept it. But many parents give up long before that. So, even if your child only plays with the strawberry on her plate, don’t give up. One day, she just may surprise you by taking a bite. But don’t go overboard, says Severe. Limit exposure to one or two new foods a week.
• Don’t bribe. Avoid using sweets as a bribe to get kids to eat something else, says Pawel. That can send the message that doing the right thing should involve an external reward. The real reward of sound nutrition is a healthy body, not a chocolate cupcake.
• Beware of oversnacking. Sometimes the problem isn’t that the child doesn’t like new foods, but that they are already full, says Ward. “Kids can consume a lot of their calories as milk and juice.” The same goes for snacks that provide little more than calories, such as chips, sweets, and sodas. “If you are going to offer snacks, make sure they are supplementing meals, not sabotaging them,” she says.
• Establish limits. Having a set of bottom-line limits can help a parent provide some consistency, says Pawel. For example, parents may require that kids eat nutritious foods before snack food. Or that they must at least try a new food before rejecting it. “Consistency only works if what you are doing in the first place is reasonable,” she says. So, avoid overly controlling or overly permissive eating rules. If bottom-line limits are healthy, effective, and balanced, they’ll pay off.
• Examine your role model. Make sure you aren’t asking kids to “do as I say, not as I do,” says Pawel. If your own diet is based mainly on fat, sugar, and salt, you can hardly expect your child to embrace a dinner salad over French fries.
• Defuse mealtimes. Don’t make your child’s eating habits part of the mealtime discussion, says Ward. Otherwise every meal becomes a stressful event, centered on what the child does and does not eat. Ward suggests that parents reserve talks about the importance of good eating for later, perhaps at bedtime or story time.
• Give it time. “I find that children become much more open to trying new foods after the age of 5,” says Ward. “Most of the time, kids will simply grow out of limited eating.”

Teenagers who drink a lot of soda have now been documented As being more prone to bone fractures and osteoporosis than thosewho do not drink much soda.

A questionnaire was given to 460 girls in the 9th and 10th grades, asking them about their diet and exercise habits, along with any History of fractures. The study’s results showed that girls who drank soft drinks were more than THREE TIMES MORE LIKELY to have a bone fracture. And physically active girls who drank Cola were nearly FIVE TIMES MORE LIKELY to have had a bone fracture.

Studies have linked mineral loss before to Cola consumption, but finally someone thought to check out teenager’s consumption and how it might affect them.

Between 40% to 60% of peak bone mass is built during the teenage years. Consumption of soft drinks affects both boys and girls. The acidic nature of the phosphoric acid in the drink causes the body to pull calcium out of the bones to buffer the acid.

Many teenagers are very active in sports. Note how much more likely drinkers of the soft drinks were likely to have a bone fracture? Thirty to fifty percent!! Is your teenager in sports and drinking soft drinks? Colas? I offer Nutritional work ups and mineral assays, using hair analysis. Teenagers I see in my practice today, more than ever before, are not eating many fruits and vegetables. These are needed to provide the minerals to build strong bones. To add to this the consumption of soft drinks and these teenagers are setting themselves up for conditions such as osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a disease in which the bones have become more porous and therefore more fragile and prone to breaking. It is thought to be a problem for older people, however this study shows that teenagers may be the newest group to suffer.

How does your teenager score in soft drink consumption? How does (s)he score in eating plenty of green vegetables? Or other food choices such as yogurt, small amounts of cheese, Beans, Salmon and other things with high calcium/mineral content? And how much water is (s)he drinking? Your teenager may not like water after drinking all the flavored and sugared drinks. However water consumption is vitally important for health and electrical conductivity of the body. As a health practitioner, I suggest one quart of water for every 50 pounds of weight. So if your teenager weighs one hundred pounds, (s)he would need to drink two quarts of water a day. As an added incentive, tell them it will help clear up many bad skin problems.

Educate yourself and your teenager about the use of soft drinks and the consequences. Remember, Prevention is the best measure! Help them to understand the importance of eating their fruits and vegetables and drinking purified water.

Jeannie Crabtree C.Ac. has worked with both people and pet’s nutrition for the last 20 years. As a Health Practitioner she shares secrets about what to do about health challenges today. Solutions, Tips, Research, Nutrition and products discussed in the Newsletter Healthy Solutions. To Subscribe visit http://www.health-doc.com