70 ways to "end childhood obesity in a generation" (w/poll)

by: desmoinesdem

Fri May 14, 2010 at 16:23:15 PM PDT

The action plan defines the goal of ending childhood obesity in a generation as returning to a childhood obesity rate of just 5 percent by 2030, which was the rate before childhood obesity first began to rise in the late 1970s. In total, the report presents a series of 70 specific recommendations, many of which can be implemented right away.

Pdf files containing the full report, or individual sections, can be downloaded here. After the jump I highlighted a few proposals that caught my attention in each of the five large sections: Early Childhood, Empowering Parents and Caregivers, Healthy Food in Schools, Access to Healthy, Affordable Food, and Increasing Physical Activity.

Berkeley Schools Cook from Scratch: An Epic Chicken

by: euclidarms

Mon May 10, 2010 at 03:55:56 AM PDT

My instructions, simple enough, were spelled out in permanent black marker on the cover of a brown pizza delivery box: Lay six chicken breasts down one side of a parchment-covered baking sheet pan, lay four across, then fill all the spaces in between. The precise pattern, altered only by the quantity of pieces involved, held for thighs, drumsticks and wings, all of which--1,400 pounds worth--had been marinating over the weekend in a teriyaki-flavored brine. If all went well, the final product--roasted teriyaki chicken--would be ready three days hence, to be served as lunch to some 2,350 children in all 16 of Berkeley, California's, schools.

I would spend the next several hours "panning up" this mountain of chicken, preparing it for its destiny in a bank of convection ovens in the district's central cooking facility at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. This was my first assignment after offering my services as galley slave in exchange for a one-week, first-hand look at how Berkeley schools accomplished a switch from the typical school diet of frozen, industrially-processed convenience foods to cooking fresh meals from scratch.

There was much more to come.

Is Marion Barry My Soul Mate?

by: euclidarms

Sat Mar 27, 2010 at 06:59:40 AM PDT

Testifying before the D.C. Council on "Healthy Schools" legislation yesterday, I found an unexpected ally in Councilmember and former Mayor Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who went out of his way to criticize the food in D.C. schools

I was there to tell the author of the legislation, Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), that she had left a huge hole in proposed school food nutrition standards where lawmakers ought to be regulating the amount of sugar and cheap carbohydrates schools serve children for breakfast and lunch.

Barry noted that he has visited city schools recently "and the food is terrible." He seems to take particular delight in skewering schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee whenever possible, so he couldn't help pointing out that neither Rhee nor any of her minions were present at yesterday's hearings. That promped Cheh to reply that school officials have been "especially cooperative" in crafting the "Healthy Schools" bill.

Barry also pointed out that the job of food services director for D.C. Public Schools had gone unfilled for a year, that food services for a time were being run by Rhee's chief operating officer, Anthony Tata, and that the man recently selected to fill the food services role, Jeffrey Mills, is a New York restaurateur with no prior experience in schools. "We have to stop this sort of nonsense," Barry said.

Identifying himself as a diabetic, Barry picked right up on the concerns I've expressed about the over-abundance of sugar and cheap carbohydrates in school meals. Barry said fruits and vegetables have been key to his own improved health. "I look healthier because I eat healthier," he said.  And indeed he does.

He then pulled out photographs I had recently taken in the cafeteria at my daughter's elementary school, H.D. Cooke, and posted on this blog and at the Better D.C. School Food blog. One photograph in particular, titled "Glycemic Bomb," shows chicken tenders thick with breading alongside a big blog of barbeque sauce for dipping, baked beans in a sugary sauce, diced peaches in a sugary syrup and a side of still more carbs: macaroni and cheese. Some students wash all this down with strawberry-flavored milk that contains only slightly less sugar than Mountain Dew. The second photo captured a child pouring strawberry milk into a container of Apple Jacks cereal for breakfast.

Either Barry himself or one of his staff apparently had copied the photos from my blog because anonymous comments had been left there asking me to identify the school where the photos had been taken, and saying the commenter needed to know for "my testimony" at the "Healthy Schools" hearing.

"I commend you for doing this," Barry said to me from the dias, adding that he had once studied biology and chemistry, and "I understand what you are talking about."

Barry then held up the "Glycemic Bomb" photo a second time for everyone in  the packed hearing room--as well as those watching via television--to see.

Here is my testimony. Note: we were given three minutes to deliver our testimony and I ran horribly over. Councilmember Cheh finally had to stop me and ask me to summarize. The is the complete version:

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ed Bruske. Let me briefly tell you who I am.

I am the parent of a 10-year-old student at H.D. Cooke Elementary School. I am a food writer, former Washington Post reporter and author of The Slow Cook blog, where my observations after spending a week behind the food lines as an observer at H.D. Cooke recently appeared as a six-part series titled, Tales from D.C. School Kitchen. I am also a certified master gardener and co-founder of D.C. Urban Gardeners. I grow much of the food our family eats in the kitchen garden that used to be our front lawn in Columbia Heights NW. I am an avid home composter and lecturer on the subject of composting. I built a 1,600-square-foot edible garden at the charter school my daughter formerly attended, and worked with the children there in food gardening and cooking activities. I teach weekly cooking and "food appreciation" classes in the after-school program at Georgetown Day School. I sit on the advisory board of the year-old D.C. Farm to School Network. Recently I helped organize an advocacy group called Parents for Better D.C. School Food.

Perhaps you now understand why I think Councilmember Cheh had me in mind when she drafted the "Healthy Schools Act."

You won't be surprised to hear that I heartily endorse most of what is contained in this legislation. This bill represents a landmark effort to bring student health and well-being into proper alignment with the health and well-being of our community, our environment, and even with the fate of our planet. This integrated approach to children's health and environmental sustainability is long overdue and cannot be delayed. At long last, we need to start sending children the right messages about healthful eating, as well as responsible environmental stewardship. Schools can and should take the lead. It won't be easy.

For several decades now, corporate food interests as well as their allies in Congress and the federal government have been conducting what you might call a giant dietary experiment on the American people. It is a diet composed of cheap, industrially-processed foods designed not for people's health but for maximum profits. This is a diet cheap on the front end, but ruinously expensive in terms of healthcare costs on the back end. It is loaded with unhealthful fats, salt, refined grains and sugar at levels previously unknown in the entire 2 million years of human evolution. And the results have become glaringly obvious: A generation of children inordinately overweight or obese, suffering unprecedented levels of metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance and diabetes, a generation that is on track to be the first with a life span shorter than its parents.

I wanted to spend time in the kitchen at my daughter's school because I had heard that the food provider for D.C. Public Schools, Chartwells, had ditched pre-packaged warm-up meals made in a factory and sealed in plastic in favor of something it called "fresh cooked." Imagine my surprise when I saw what "fresh cooked" actually meant: some of the worst our industrialized food system has to offer--extruded meats mixed with soy protein and doused with chemicals, highly processed foods that do not occur in nature, cooked in factories hundreds of miles away and shipped frozen to District of Columbia where they can be easily reheated and served to children.

The food I witnessed represents the culmination of unfortunate trends that have been converging in school cafeterias for decades, a perfect storm, if you will, of private industry intervention, cheap, unskilled labor, and underfunded government policies run amok. A classic example: flavorless scrambled eggs made not on a stove, but in a factory 1,100 miles away in Minnesota with no less than 10  industrial ingredients: soybean oil, xanthan gum, artificial butter flavor, lipolized butter oil, medium chain triglycerides. The pre-cooked eggs, looking something like a pale yellow version of cottage cheese, arrive frozen, then are simply warmed in a steamer before being tossed with shredded, processed cheese. Amazingly, the egg salad served at H.D. Cooked is made with pre-boiled eggs, already diced and frozen.

Are these really the lessons we want to teach our kids about food? Do we really think that feeding this kind of food to children day after day has no effect on their health or academic performance? In fact, we are perilously close to losing our collective memory of what constitutes real, wholesome food.

The "Healthy Schools" bill you have before you addresses many of the issues of poor quality school food with a vision of school gardening and locally grown farm products. Having used just such an approach with children in the past, I know it works. I know how eagerly kids will plant and harvest vegetables, fight for a turn to wash lettuce and spin it dry, jump at a chance to handle a vegetable peeler or a box grater. Children will eagerly eat their vegetables and all sorts of healthful foods if given a chance to learn about them in a personal way. Education about healthful foods is key to getting kids to eat more healthfully.

But something even worse than all the processed, pre-cooked foods in D.C. school meals leapt out at me during my week at H.D. Cooke, and that's all the sugar. Children are routinely doused with sugar, at breakfast and at lunch. Since the 1970s, we in the U.S. have been waging a war against fat. More than 30 years later, we are fatter than ever. It turns out that while we were barring fat at the front door, sugar was pouring in through the back door. Federal regulations in the subsidized meal program set a limit-30 percent of calories-for the fat school food can contain. But there is no such limit on sugar. Similarly, the "Healthy Schools  Act" has a hole in it big enough to drive a high-fructose corn syrup tanker through: No limit on sugar.

What food providers cannot serve as fat, they serve as sugar to meet minimum calorie requirements. Thus, our kids are being stuffed with nutritionally worthless sugar on a daily basis. It's not just the Pop Tarts and Giant Goldfish Grahams and Apple Jacks cereal and Crunchmania Cinnamon Bun cookies being served in public school cafeterias. We're also talking about concentrated fruit juices with the same sugar content as Coca-Cola, and flavored milks that rival Mountain Dew.

One morning recently I stopped by H.D. Cooke and saw kids eating a breakfast of those Kellogg's Crunchmania cookies, grape juice and chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk. In fact, some kids were dipping the sugar-glazed cookies in their cartons of chocolate milk. I made a calculation and found that in that single, highly processed breakfast, kids were consuming 13 teaspoons of sugar. And that's before their school day had even begun. Is it any wonder teachers complain of kids being out of control after they eat?

Some authorities, such as Ann Cooper, the "renegade lunch lady" known for introducing freshly cooked food in the schools of Berkeley, California, and now Boulder, Colorado, recognize that sugar is not just a problem of empty calories. Sugar and refined carbohydrates trigger insulin, a powerful hormone that is also responsible for fat storage in the body. More and more medical researchers are recognizing that it's not just the number of calories we consume, but the type of calories that can determine our health. Too many refined grains, starchy potatoes, sugar and other cheap carbohydrates may be great for cash-strapped school budgets and food industry profits, but they are not good for kids' health.

The good news is, you don't have to wait for D.C. Public Schools to access locally grown farm products to make a dramatic difference in the quality of school food. You can make a huge difference by simply limiting the amount of sugar being served. It is high time that nutrition standards place a limit on the amount of sugar in school meals, just as they do on fat. Ann Cooper and other school food authorities have eliminated flavored milk from their menus. You can do the same, or at least limit flavored milk to one day a week. You can replace sugary fruit juices with whole fruits, which not only contain less sugar, but also deliver fiber and valuable micro-nutrients.

Beyond that, we should have no illusions that simply upgrading nutritional requirements in school food will solve the problem. Processed foods can be loaded with nutrients and still come out of the kitchen unpalatable. Food service in D.C. Public Schools currently is a money-driven program. It needs to be a food-driven program. For positive changes to truly succeed, schools and kitchen staff  need to be trained, properly equipped and committed to the idea of serving fresh, whole food to children on a daily basis.

Kids are too young to make informed choices about the foods they eat. As adults-as administrators, teachers, legislators, parents-we need to step up and make decisions about what is best for our children. The "Healthy Schools Act" is an excellent place to start.

Tracking Obesity in "Healthy Schools" Bill

by: euclidarms

Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 04:13:32 AM PDT

Re-tooled language in "Healthy Schools" legislation scheduled for a public hearing before the D.C. Council this week would require city schools to provide parents each year with a measurement of the body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio of every child, as well as an estimate of the amount of exercise each child engages in. It also calls on city schools to consider extending the school day in order for children to have more time for physical activity, and would offer grants to schools that commit to making students more active.

Schools would also be required to send parents information in English and Spanish explaining how to interpret unhealthy body mass and waist-to-hip information and what steps can be taken to address weight problems.

Drafters of the legislation last week backed away from strict nutrition standards recommended by the Institute of Medicine that would require increased portion sizes of vegetables served in school meals, saying schools cannot guarantee the quality of vegetables offered  in cafeterias or that students won't throw them in the trash.

Instead, the legislation embraces requirements set forth in the U.S. Department of Agriculture "HealthierUS School Challenge," which establishes several different levels of stringency in school food nutrition.

The "Healthy Schools" bill would require all D.C. public schools to adopt the "gold" level of the USDA program, meaning school cafeterias would need to offer 1/4-cup servings of  dark green or orange vegetables three or more days per week, and cooked dry beans or peas once per week.  Schools would also be required to offer a different fruit, either fresh, frozen, canned, dried or 100 percent juice, every day of the week, but 100 percent fruit juice could be counted as fruit only once per week. At least one serving of whole-grain food would be offered each day.

The new bill also drops an attempt to create detailed nutrition standards for foods served outside the reqular food line in school cafeterias--so-called "competitive" foods--as well as those sold in vending machines and in school stores. Again, the "HealthierUS School Challenge" standards would apply. Total fat in those foods could be no more than 35 percent of calories, trans fat must be less than .5 grams per serving, saturated fat less than 10 percent and sugar no more than 35 percent by weight.

The only beverages allowed would be low-fat or skim milk, 100 percent fruit juice with no sweeteners and water, meaning no sugary sodas, sports drinks or ice teas. The standards would not apply to foods and beverages offered at official after-school events.

Among the other major features of the new "Healthy Schools" draft:

* Minimum and maximum limits for calories in school breakfast and lunch at all grade levels.

* Zero trans fats is school meals

* Random testing of school food to ensure that nutrition standards are being met.

* An additional 10 cents in funding for each breakfast and 10 cents for each lunch.

*Full funding for students who qualify for reduced-price meals.

* Offer breakfast in the classroom in all elementary schools where at least 40 percent of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, and other alternative methods of serving breakfast in qualifying middle and high schools.

* Phasing in minimum levels of exercise over a five-year period for elementary and middle-school students, from 30 minutes per week to 150 minutes per week for children in Kindergarten through grade five, and from 45 minutes per week to 225 minutes per week for children in grades six through eight. Sources say the demand for more physical activity is one area where the legislation is meeting some resitance, because it might cut into class time. The most recent draft calls on schools to "seek to increase physical activity by considering extending the school day."

As part of better nutrition, the bill requires schools to incorporate local farm products in school meals "whenever possible" and would fund a five-cent bonus for lunches that include local produce. It also calls for a school food gardening program.

More Gardens, Less Sugar, Says D.C. Schools Chief

by: euclidarms

Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 04:05:22 AM PST

Anthony Tata, a former brigadier general and career Army officer in charge of procurement in Afghanistan, is the chief operating officer for D.C. Public Schools,  second in rank to chancellor Michelle Rhee. Tata was a close reader of our recent series of articles on the food served in D.C. schools--Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen--which questioned the highly processed and frequently sugary fare being served to children on a daily basis. Tata told The Washington Post that he is considering other options besides the school system's current food provider, Chartwells. You  won't find him disparaging Chartwells in this interview with The Slow Cook, except to say that school officials "are working with Chartwells to address concerns."  Tata does say he is looking for ways to include more local produce in school meals and is considering a switch from highly-sweetened flavored milk. And there's a new director of school food services on the scene who is particularly keen on school garden.

Taking a Page from Michelle Obama's Playbook: D.C. Pol Pushes "Healthy Schools"

by: euclidarms

Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 02:30:10 AM PST

"My bill will see to it that students are eating fresh healthy food in school cafeterias throughout the District"--Mary Cheh

D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) has introduced landmark "Healthy Schools" legislation that integrates nutrition standards, locally produced foods, school gardening, broader access to subsidized meals and increased physical exercise to address obesity and other children's health issues in the nation's capitol. I recently submitted 34 written questions to Cheh about her bill, resulting in this interview by e-mail. The questions were submitted before I reported a six-part account of the food being served in D.C. schools.  

Getting Kids to Eat Vegetables: Make Soup for the New Director of School Food Services

by: euclidarms

Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 03:57:13 AM PST

Well, it's finally happened. The kids in the food appreciation classes I teach at a private elementary school here in the District of Columbia have graduated (the older ones, at least) from plastic knives to real knives.

The only reason this hadn't happened sooner was my failure to deliver on promises I'd been making for, oh, the last couple of years. Turns out elementary-aged children are perfectly capable of dicing an onion with a steak knife. So I made a trip to Target and bought several sets of those "Made in China" knives that sell for $1 dollar each. Then we organized a cooking lesson around a dish that requires lots of vegetable prep: vegetable soup.

Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen, Part 5: Food Service Turns a "Green" School into an Enviro Hog

by: euclidarms

Sat Jan 23, 2010 at 03:10:45 AM PST

I recently spent a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School here in the District of Columbia observing how food is prepared. This is the fifth in a six-part series of posts about what I saw.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen, Part 4--Hold the fat and please pass the sugar

by: euclidarms

Fri Jan 22, 2010 at 03:46:14 AM PST

I recently spent a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School here in the District of Columbia observing how food is prepared. This is the fourth in a six-part series of posts about what I saw.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The Evils of School Gardens

by: euclidarms

Tue Jan 12, 2010 at 02:19:46 AM PST

Apparently so. I would not have believed it, but there it is in the otherwise esteemed Atlantic magazine, a venomous screed that would have you believe that gardening constitutes some sinister scheme to take over our nation's schools; that schools are turning kids into farm workers; that the educational establishment is throwing math and reading to the dogs in favor of growing arugula.

Local Food in "Healthy Schools": The Debate Begins

by: euclidarms

Wed Jan 06, 2010 at 05:08:37 AM PST

Is Phys Ed the Death of Learning?

by: euclidarms

Tue Dec 29, 2009 at 06:12:41 AM PST

Jay Matthews, the Post's education reporter, says the "Healthy Schools" initiative introduced recently in the D.C. Council makes a big mistake by requiring the city's children to engage in more physical activity. How, Matthews wonders, will they ever have time to learn reading and math?

Matthews, a veteran reporter, seems to have thought this over for about 10 seconds and gives no particular evidence for his conclusion other than what he thinks some teachers might feel about sacrificing class time so that kids can get more exercise.

A Landmark Vision for "Healthy Schools"

by: euclidarms

Wed Dec 16, 2009 at 04:49:02 AM PST

Among the issues Cheh said her recently introduced "Healthy Schools" legislation is designed to address:

*Eighteen percent of District high school students are obese and 35 percent are overweight, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

*Eighty-one percent of D.C. high schoolers do not eat the recommended five daily servings of fruits and vegetables

* Eighty-five percent of female teenagers to not consume enough calcium.

* Seventy percent of high school students in the District fail to meet the CDC's recommended level of physical activity.

* Thirty-two percent of children in the District live in poverty, 19.2 percent in extreme poverty. More than half do not have a personal doctor and 34 percent of children have not had a preventive medical visit and dental visit in the past year.

* One in six children in the District has asthma, one of the highest rates in the country.

Over the past six days, I have been writing about the details of the "Healthy Schools" bill (here, here, here, here, here and here), introduced jointly by Cheh and Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D). The paper released yesterday by Cheh lays out the reasons for numerous policy upgrades designed to vault the District of Columbia into the front ranks of school districts embracing the modern food movement.

"Teaching students to live a healthy lifestyle and making school environments healthier," Cheh tells colleagues, "can have a major, lifelong impact on the wellbeing of our youngest generation."

About 40,000 children attend schools in the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) system, while another 20,000 attend charter schools. The DCPS food provider, Chartwells, serves meals to about 30,000 children each day. Charter schools hire their own food providers, often small caterers, individually.

The bill would make breakfast free to all public school students in the District. The D.C. Public School System already provides universal free breakfast. The new policy would extend free breakfasts to all charter school students. The bill also would broaden the number of students eligible for free lunch. Currently, students whose family incomes are within 131 percent and 185 percent of the federal poverty level qualify for a "reduced-price" lunch and pay about 20 cents per meal. The school system has eliminated the co-payment in more than 70 schools, and Cheh's bill would expand the program to all schools, including charter schools, in an effort to increase the number of children who eat lunch.

According to Cheh, 27 states have passed school nutrition policies while 21 states have enacted farm-to-school policies for incorporating locally grown produce in school meals. The District has done neither. The "Healthy Schools" bill would establish local nutritional standards exceeding federal requirements, and, over a four-year phase-in period, bring the District into line with standards recently developed by the Institute of Medicine for the U.S. Department of Ariculture.

The standards call for reduced consumption of salt and sugar and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables. Cheh's bill requires that all eligible D.C schools participate in the federal government's "Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program." The option is available to schools where at least 50 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, but only 23 of 88 eligible schools in the city currently participate, Cheh said.

The bill embraces policies adopted in 2006 by the city's Board of Education to restrict the sale of sugary beverages and manage the portion sizes of junk food. According to Cheh, some 15 percent of D.C. public schools--and an unknown number of charter schools--do not follow the policies. The legislation not only makes those policies law, but sets out fines of $500 per day for schools that are not in compliance.

Cheh argues that children will be more likely to eat more fruits and vegetables if these are sourced from local farmers practicing "sustainable" agriculture. Local produce tastes better, Cheh says, and purchasing it boosts the local economy and helps the environment. The bill includes a five-cent bonus for school meals that include local produce, as well as grants--when funds are appropriated--to assist local groups in building infrastructure for distributing and storing local farm products.

"According to community experts," Cheh writes, "this nickel incentive is large enough to significantly increase the amount of fresh, local foods and vegetables served in the schools."

According to Cheh, DCPS is engaged in a pilot recycling program that includes 40 schools. The "Healthy Schools" bill requires that schools recycle paper, bottles, cans and cardboard, including food services. However, because system-wide recycling would need additional funding, it would only take effect when funds "become available."

"Currently, school meals create enormous amounts of waste," Cheh says. Her bill would, within four years, ban Stryrofoam trays, tens of thousands of which go into school trash cans every day. The bill would also require the schools to compost food waste. According to Cheh, DCPS and its food provider, Chartwells, "would like to compost, but lack the funds and infrastructure to do so." The bill would establish a pilot composting program, but--again--only when funds are appropriated.

"Healthy Schools" would also establish "wellness centers" in all of the city's high schools. Currently, the District operates a handful of such centers--Woodson, Anacasita and Spingarn--where "comprehensive medical services" are managed by Children's Hospital with staff from the medical residency program at Georgetown Univeristy. The bill calls for developing a plan by 2015 to expand the program.

Federal law requires school districts to develop "wellness" policies, but contains no requirement for updating them. Cheh's bill would require that wellness policies for D.C. schools be updated every three years, and that they address "environmental sustainability and farm-to-school intitives" as well.

According to Cheh, the biggest complaint about wellness policies is that they are not widely known or promoted. A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that only 45 percent of D.C. schools had copes of their wellness policies. The "Healthy Schools" legislation would require schools to post the policies on their websites, and share them with food service providers, PTA's and anyone who asks for them in school offices.

"Healthy Schools" Means More Exercise

by: euclidarms

Mon Dec 14, 2009 at 06:41:40 AM PST

These are the cornerstones of sweeping "Healthy Schools" legislation (previous posts here, here, here and here) introduced last week in the D.C. Council. Parents and nutritionists across the country have watched with alarm in recent years as children have become increasingly obese and even fallen victim to adult diseases such as diabetes while schools introduced more and more junk food and cut back on physical exercise.

The bill introduced by D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), in addition to eliminating sodas and sugary beverages from all public schools and phasing in new nutritional standards, would require physical exercise in all schools through the eighth grade.

Specifically, students in Kindergarten through grade 5 would be required to participate in at least 150 minutes (two and one-half hours) of physical education classes each week, while grades 6 through 8 would have 225 minutes (three and three-quarters hours). At least half of that class time would have to be devoted to "actual physical activity," according to the bill, "with as much class time as possible spent in moderate physical activity."

Physical education would be "designed, implemented, and evaluated to help students develop the knowledge, motor skills, self-management skills, attitudes and confidence needed to adopt and maintain physical acitivity throughout their lives."

The bill does not set forth exercise standards for high schoolers. Individual schools could be exempted from the standards if they can show they do not have the facilities to implement them.

Physical activity is part of a broad health and wellness initiative in the bill. In addition to requiring schools to promote local wellness policies to faculty, staff, parents and students, the proposal calls on the city's health department, the public schools and the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization to "develop a plan" for establishing and operating "wellness centers" in all of the city's high schools by 2015. It does not specify exactly what those centers would do.

The legislation would also establish a "Healthy Youth and Schools Commission" to advise the mayor and D.C. Council on "health, wellness, and nutritional issues concerning youth and schools in the District." The commission would have a broad mandate to evaluate health and nutrition programs citywide and recommend standards, best practices and programs.

"Healthy Schools" Pushes Food Gardening

by: euclidarms

Sun Dec 13, 2009 at 07:45:52 AM PST