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In a sweeping mid-March decision, the administration for a British elementary school banned sweets from nearly every type of student event, including fund raisers and birthday celebrations. Parents are not happy about the change, with one even calling the new rule "draconian."

Mum Angela Craig said: "As a parent, I am really cross at being dictated to like this. Up until this point, I think the school had handled the situation beautifully." & George Strang, whose grandchildren attend [the school] said: "I have written to the school asking if this is an early April Fool. If not, it is political correctness gone mad." [Source: Mearns (UK) Leader]

Head teacher Gail Macfarlane said the decision to ban sweets was based on the schools interpretation of guidelines laid out in the latest edition of Healthy Eating in Schools. The decision was also influenced by a small minority of parents who wanted junk food eliminated from the school.

Many schools in both the UK and the United States have banned junk foods in an effort to improve student health and reduce rates of childhood obesity.

Labels: UK, schools, junk food

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Canadians are engaging in a national debate about whether their obesity epidemic warrants new laws and taxes similar to the ones used against smoking.

According to a Jan. 14 article by Meagan Fitzpatrick of Canwest News Service, the proposed laws would ban the sale of unhealthy foods or tax them, and put government subsidies on fruit and vegetables:

Governments over the years, have passed various pieces of legislation designed to reduce smoking, including increased taxation and packaging requirements, and some health experts have been pushing for similar initiatives to combat obesity.

Proposals include banning the advertising of unhealthy foods, increasing taxes on food that isn't nutritious, subsidizing fruits and vegetables to make them more affordable for Canadians and forcing the food industry to change its labelling, packaging and ingredients.

"This is a legitimate public debate about how far you go with voluntary versus legal restrictions," said [Dr. David] Butler-Jones. "The timing for that I think, really depends on when a community is educated enough, and ready enough and understands the implications."

In 2009, a Canadian group posed a legal challenge to companies that were marketing junk food to children.

Labels: junk food, prevention, awareness, canada

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An audit of New York City schools has revealed that the schools routinely make junk food available to students -- a move that New York City Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says is undermining efforts to encourage students to follow a health diet plan:

Auditors found that school stores and vending machines at 20 of 30 city schools visited sold candy, soda, and other unhealthy snacks to students during lunch periods in direct violation of the Chancellors policies and in direct competition with the healthy lunches offered by the Department of Education. (Source: Empire State News)

The auditors also found that 14 out of 15 audited schools made unhealthy food available throughout the day, not just during lunch.

Labels: causes of childhood obesity, schools, junk food

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A major study of 8,900 Danish schoolchildren produced interesting results regarding how children taste food.

Girls have a better sense of taste than boys do, although they have the same number of taste buds. Boys needed 10% more sourness and 20% more sweetness than girls did in order to recognize certain flavors. Perhaps not surprisingly, boys prefer extreme flavors. They gave highest approval to the sweetest sodas and the sourest foods.

One in three children does not like sweet foods or drinks. However, 48% of the children gave their highest marks to sweets.

The ability to taste improves gradually as a child gets older. By age 13 or 14, most children prefer sweets less often.

The Danish Science Communication and the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen cooperated to perform this study.

Labels: junk food, sweets, tastes

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The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a report which shows that children and teenagers are subjected to dozen of hours of food commercials every year; nearly 41 hours for teens between the ages of 13 and 17.

"That might not be a problem if the ads promoted healthy fare. But the report, the largest over conducted on food marketing to children and teens, highlights how TV commercials mostly tout junk food."

One-third of the commercials promoted candy and snacks, 28 percent were for cereals, and 10 percent were for fast food. Though many countries regulate food advertising, the United States isn't one of the. Which means the regulating is up to the parents. Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Obesity Program at Children's Hospital in Boston, recommends that parents limit their children's television watching to as little as a half-hour a day. Read more at DallasNews.com.

Labels: junk food, marketing, media influences

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If you ate only what is advertised on television, you would eat 25 times too much sugar and 20 times too much fat. You would also get less than half the recommended amounts of vegetables, dairy products and fruits, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Prof. Michael Mink and his colleagues at Armstrong Atlantic State University analyzed 84 hours of prime time and 12 hours of Saturday morning cartoon television to identify what foods were being promoted in advertisements. Nearly every ad was touting what the dietitians call "junk food."

"The public should be informed about the nature and extent of the buyers in televised advertising," according to the study. "Educational efforts should provide consumers with skills for distinguishing balanced food selection from imbalanced food selection."
 

Labels: junk food, media influences

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 2 Comments

In an effort to prevent rising rates of childhood obesity, Mexico is about to outlaw junk food in primary and secondary schools.

Schools will no longer be allowed to sell sugary soda drinks and sweetened fruit juices, processed snacks, and high-calorie, fried foods. Health Minister Jose Cordoba said Mexican consumption of fruit and vegetables dropped 40 percent even as consumption of sweet drinks rose 50 percent in the last 15 years.
 

Labels: junk food

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 2 Comments

If a child's favorite cartoon character appears on a food package, the child is more likely to say the food tastes good, according to a study from Yale University Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

• Researchers asked 40 children ages 4 to 6 years old to evaluate pairs of snack packages of graham crackers, carrots, and gummy fruit.
• One package had a picture of either Scooby-Doo, Dora the Explorer or Shrek; the other did not.
• Two-thirds of the children told researchers they preferred the package with the cartoon character, and half said the food in that package tasted better even though it was identical to the other package.

The study appeared in the journal Pediatrics.
 

Labels: junk food, advertising, media influences

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A study out of Montreal, Canada, has found that an increasing number of young people are using their bedrooms as “junk food havens” where they can eat whatever they want, without any adult supervision.

In the study of 534 10- to 12-year-olds, the Universite de Montreal researchers found that 58 percent of boys eat once in a while or every day in their bedroom, compared with 48 percent of girls. And when the researchers asked the kids what they ate, they were astonished by the responses.

The boys were more likely to wolf down pastries, ice cream, hamburgers, pizza, chips, French fries and soft drinks. [Source: The Montreal Gazette]

Very few of the boys or girls surveyed ate anything healthy while in their rooms, and many of them ate in front of a television or computer screen. Researchers encouraged parents to make family meals a priority, and to make them healthy. Parents are also encouraged to replace junk food with healthier snacks like fruits and vegetables.

Labels: parenting, junk food, family meals

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments

Good news from the realm of media influences on childhood obesity. Children are seeing fewer advertisements for food on television shows, according to new research from the Institute for Health Research and Policy.

• Study leaders Lisa Powell, Glen Szczpka and Frank Chaloupka analyzed Nielsen Media Research television ratings for children and adolescents between the years 2003 and 2007.
• Preschoolers were watching 14% fewer food ads, and ages 6 to 11 years old, nearly 4% fewer.
• However, food ads were slightly up for teenagers by 3.7%. Ads for candy bars and cookies were down by 41% for preschoolers, almost 30% for 6 to 11-year-olds, and 12% for teenagers.
• Ads for bottled water increased but those for sugar-sweetened soft drinks were down.

African-American children were exposed to 1.5 times more television ads for foods because they watch more television than other ethnic groups.

This study appears in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
 

Labels: television, junk food, advertising, media influences

Posted By: CRC Health 1 Comment

Forty percent of the food the children eat has little or no nutritional value, according to a new study from the National Cancer Institute in Maryland.

"This number is staggering and depressing," said Professor Kelly Brownell of Yale University.

The study found that half of the calories that children ages 2 to 18 year old consume every day come from six foods:

1. sweetened soda
2. sugary fruit drinks
3. grain desserts, such as cake, cookies, and doughnuts
4. dairy desserts such as ice cream
5. pizza
6. whole milk.

Soda with sugar accounted for ten percent of their daily calorie intake.

"High added sugar consumption, which occurs most commonly in the form of sugar sweetened beverages, is associated with a constellation of cardiovascular risk factors and the development of obesity," said Dr. Rae Ellen Kavey of the University of Rochester's Medical Center Department of Pediatrics.

The study appears in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association
 

Labels: diet, nutrition, junk food

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 3 Comments