The Philadelphia Elementary School Diet
April 9, 2008 – 2:49 pm by
Glen
Forget the South Beach Diet, Zone at Home Diet or even the diet my dad is currently on, the Scared Witless Diet. Five elementary schools in Philly have been eating healthier for the past two years. And the results are in! The program was developed by Food Trust, a non-for profit that is about making healthy/affordable food more accessible.
I read about this in an article written by AP writer Stephanie Nano. I have hunch that her MP3 player of choice is the iPod Nano. The story made front page on social news site Current.com.
FYI, Stephanie Nano is not an education writer. Her beat is health & medical. What does the previous statement have to do with the price of tea in Tibet? (Notice my subtle attempt to give a shout out to Tibet.) Well, the story was not about education. It was about health. And how the diet improved the health, not grades, of the participating students.
What then is the connection to schools? According to the article: Schools are ideal settings for programs that target childhood obesity, the researchers noted. Children spend long hours each day at schools and eat lunch and often breakfast at school.
Makes sense to me!
Some of the things that the schools did:
- Spent hours teaching kids/parents/teachers about nutrition
- Encouraged healthy snacks by sponsoring raffles
- Urged kids to exercise during recess
- Used food labels to teach fractions (awesome!)
- Replaced sodas in the cafeteria/vending machines with juice/water/low-fat
- Suspended fat kids. Kidding!
And guess what? The number of overweight students dropped.
The article says that five schools participated; including Fairhill School and Francis Hopkins. Not sure which are the remaining three schools…still trying to get that info.
I am wondering what sort of impact, if any, did the candy-ban have on the students grades. Just from looking at the tests scores of these two schools, it’s difficult to make a verdict. While Fairhill School continues to score higher on tests, Francis Hopkins School appears to be performing worse!
P.S. I am heading downstairs to the building cafe to get some licorice and lemon heads
