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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2002: article | |
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Conference outlines how to improve children’s nutrition By Karen Tuohey Wing | ||||||
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If you think feeding one child is a challenge, try planning a healthy menu for a school cafeteria, educating a low-income population about nutrition or working with families as a nutrition specialist. It certainly isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either, participants of the How to Grow a Healthy Child conference learned. Ninety-five dietitians, school foodservice directors, school nurses, public and rural health nurses, family and consumer science teachers, Cooperative Extension agents and professionals working in Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs, day care centers and other programs for children attended the conference. Sponsors were the College of Health and Human Development and Penn State Cooperative Extension, in collaboration with the School of Nursing and the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Recreation Management in the College of Health and Human Development. “The College of Health and Human Development has a strong commitment to child development and all issues related to raising healthy children,” Dr. Fred W. Vondracek, associate dean for undergraduate studies and outreach in the College of Health and Human Development, said. “Through this conference, we tried to offer some of the most current research to professionals who share our commitment to help children grow into healthy adults.” “A major priority for Penn State Cooperative Extension is to provide information and education on nutrition and the food system to families and young people to increase awareness, change negative behaviors and, ultimately, improve their health,” Dr. Theodore R. Alter, associate vice president for outreach, director of Cooperative Extension and associate dean in the College of Agricultural Sciences, said. “Our family and consumer science extension educators are working with community organizations and individuals to address the need for programming and technical information on nutrition.” Dr. Marilyn Corbin, assistant director of Penn State Cooperative Extension and state program leader for children, youth and families, said, “The conference provided critically important nutrition and health information to professionals who work with children and offered them opportunities to discuss many of the challenges they face. These individuals are playing an important role in educating children to make healthy choices about diet and physical activity.” Keynote speaker Dr. Duane F. Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health, set the tone for the conference by addressing the eating habits of today’s children, the stage when disordered eating starts and the role of physical activity in children’s health. He holds a baccalaureate degree from Penn State and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Leann Birch, professor and head of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, has focused her research on areas including developing control of food intake in young children and the antecedents of dieting in girls during middle childhood. Her session on “Disordered Eating” covered some of the challenges of guiding children and families to healthier eating. She pointed out that while babies are born with a definite preference for sweet and salty tastes, it doesn’t mean that children are doomed to a diet of candy, soda and chips. “Familiarity shapes children’s preferences,” Birch said. “Children learn what to like, even though it might take up to 20 exposures to a particular food.” On the other hand, “restriction of particular foods seems to lead to eating in the absence of hunger and a negative self-evaluation, even as early as age 5,” she said. Her research reveals that younger children (age 3.6) respond to internal hunger cues, while by age 5, children respond to portion size (i.e. the bigger the portion, the more they eat). Birch emphasized that through education healthier dieting patterns can be fostered and the risk of disordered eating can be reduced. Dr. Carol A. Smith, professor-in-charge of outreach and project director for the School of Nursing’s Rural Nursing Center, emphasized the importance of effective communication to help families understand the facts about diet and eating behaviors. Unfortunately, getting the time to communicate the message is a problem for many nutrition educators. She pointed out that the average time available to discuss healthy eating in a busy clinic environment can be as little as five minutes. Compare that to the three hours and 10 minutes many children and adolescents spend in front of the television each day. And consider that more than half of the advertising on television is for food that has little or no nutritional value. No wonder there is a negative correlation between TV viewing and vegetable consumption. Some of those trying to change this unhappy statistic are the students in the Nutrition Service Project. This unique Penn State student-initiated, student-run and student-directed service-learning project is now funded by the College of Health and Human Development. Annina Burns, founder and director of the project, discussed the project during the conference, noting this interdisciplinary program offers Penn State students the opportunity to develop and teach nutrition-based programs monthly to low-income students in elementary schools and annually to middle and high school students through the project’s Spring Break Alternative. Burns said the 2001 Spring Break sessions included “Moore Calcium Please,” “What’s up with Food Advertising and Packaging,” “What’s the Fat in Fast Food?” and “Navigating Health Information in the Media World.” Professionals are also doing their part. Aramark Corporation sent 15 of its school foodservice directors to the How to Grow a Healthy Child conference, as did school district directors across the state. Dorrie Lisle presented information on the Pennsylvania Nutrition Education Network, with its 24 partners, including Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Penn State Department of Food Science, regional food banks, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and others. Dr. Judith Young ended the conference by adding a valuable perspective on the role of physical activity in the healthy growth of children. She has served for 10 years as the executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE), the only national organization representing prekindergarten through 12th-grade physical education teachers, curriculum specialists and teacher-preparation faculty. She works with NASPE members to develop and support quality sport, physical education and physical behaviors and individual well-being. In their evaluations of the conference, participants made many positive comments reinforcing the importance of spreading the latest nutrition research and developments to the public to improve the eating habits of children and adults. Participants wrote: “Valuable information from excellent speakers.” “Dr. Alexander’s talk was excellent!” and “Conklin and Bordi — informative, interesting and knowledgeable.” An outreach program of the College of Health and Human Development, Penn State Cooperative Extension, School of Nursing and School of Hotel, Restaurant and Recreation Management | |||||
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