When middle schools offer healthy foods in their cafeterias and add more hours of physical education, student rates of obesity and diabetes go down, according to a major study from Temple University.
- Researchers studied 4,600 children for three years.
- The average age of the students was 11 years old, and they attended 63 middle schools.
- There were no interventions at the 21 schools used as a control group.
- In the remaining 42 schools, students had healthier food choices in their cafeterias, including foods that are high in fiber and low in fat, fruits and vegetables, and water or low-fat milk as beverages.
- They also received a minimum of 225 minutes of physical education every ten days and educational programs promoting healthy behaviors.
Overweight students in the schools that had the interventions were 21percent less likely to become obese. Although all the schools in the study had similar declines in the percentage of overweight and obese students, schools that had the interventions showed improvements in obesity, measurement waistlines and fasting insulin levels.
The study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Labels: schools
Posted By: My Overweight Child
