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To: Lane3 who wrote (210815)	7/5/2007 7:16:16 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793955

Federal spending fails to get schoolchildren to eat their vegetables By Martha Mendoza The Associated Press Tucson, Arizona \| Published: 07.05.2007 The federal government will spend more than $1 billion this year on nutrition education — fresh carrot and celery snacks, videos of dancing fruit, hundreds of hours of lively lessons about how great you will feel if you eat well. But an Associated Press review of scientific studies examining 57 such programs found mostly failure. Just four showed any real success in changing the way kids eat — or any promise as weapons against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity. "Any person looking at the published literature about these programs would have to conclude that they are generally not working," said Dr. Tom Baranowski, a pediatrics professor at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine who studies behavioral nutrition. The results have been disappointing: ? Last year a major federal pilot program offering free fruits and vegetables to schoolchildren showed fifth-graders became less willing to eat them than they had at the start. Apparently they didn't like the taste. ? In Pennsylvania, researchers went so far as to give prizes to schoolchildren who ate fruits and vegetables. That worked while the prizes were offered, but when the researchers came back seven months later the kids had reverted to their original eating habits: soda and chips. ? In studies where children tell researchers they are eating better or exercising more, there is usually no change in blood pressure, body size or cholesterol measures; they want to eat better, they might even think they are, but they're not. Better attitudes, not behavior The studies don't tell Leticia Jenkins anything she doesn't know. She's one of the bravest teachers in America — not because she gave her seventh- and eighth-graders 30 sharp knives to chop tomatoes, onions, jalapeños and limes for a lesson on salsa and nutrition, but because she understands the futility of what she is trying to do. "Oh, it's so hard, because at the end of the day sometimes I take a moment, I think gosh, I did all this and we still see them across the street picking up the doughnuts and the coffee drinks," she said. The forces that make kids fat "are really strong and hard to fight with just a program in school," said Dr. Philip Zeitler, a pediatric endocrinologist and researcher who sees "a steady stream" of obese children struggling with diabetes and other potentially fatal medical problems at The Children's Hospital in Denver. Jenkins offers fact-filled and engaging nutrition lessons as part of a $7 million U.S. Department of Agriculture program that reaches about 388,000 students a year in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The most recent evaluation of the 8-year-old program was disheartening: No difference in the amount of fruits and vegetables eaten by kids participating in the program and those who weren't. Teachers who spent more hours on nutrition education had no greater impact than those who didn't. And parent behavior didn't change either. "It's true, it didn't change what they actually eat. But the program really made a difference in how kids were feeling about fruits and vegetables. They really had a more positive attitude toward fruits and vegetables," said Dr. Mike Prelip, a UCLA researcher who headed up the evaluation. Kate Houston, the deputy undersecretary of the USDA's Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, oversees most federal funds, $696 million this year, spent on childhood nutrition education in this country. Funding has steadily increased in recent years, up from $535 million in 2003. Houston insists the programs are successful. When asked about the many studies that don't show improvement, Houston asked for copies of the research. And she said the USDA doesn't have the resources to undertake "long-term, controlled, medical modeled studies" necessary to determine the impact of its programs. There may be pieces of solutions found in limited studies currently being tested around the country. In some situations, obese and overweight children can lose weight and get healthy through rigorous hospital and clinic-based interventions that involve regular check-ins, family involvement, scheduled exercise and nutrition education. School programs that increase physical activity are also more likely to have an impact than nutrition education. azstarnet.com