Nutrition Blitz Failing , Review Finds

Jul 05, 07:28 AM

Current Headlines: By MARTHA MENDOZA

By Martha Mendoza

The Associated Press

PANORAMA CITY, Calif.

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. Only four showed any real success in changing the way children 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 shown that :

n

Last year, a major federal pilot program offering free fruits and vegetables to schoolchildren showed that fifth-graders became less willing to eat them than they had been at the start. Apparently they didn't like the taste.

n

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 children had reverted to their original eating habits: soda and chips.

n

In studies in which 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 and they might even think they are, but they're not.

The studies don't tell Leticia Jenkins anything she doesn't know.

She gave her seventh- and eighth-graders 30 sharp knives to chop tomatoes, onions, jalapenos and limes for a lesson on salsa and nutrition, but she understands the futility of what she is trying to do.

"Oh, it's so hard," she said, "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.'

"

Nationally, obesity rates have nearly quintupled among 6- to 11- year-olds and tripled among teens and children ages 2 to 5 since the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The medical consequences of obesity in the United States - diabetes, high blood pressure, even orthopedic problems - cost an estimated $100 billion a year.

Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., nominated as the next surgeon general, says fighting childhood obesity is his top priority.

(c) 2007 Virginian - Pilot. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.