Taking It Outside
Children are packing on pounds during a season once associated with outdoor activity and exercise. Addressing that problem means confronting a number of factors that are contributing to poor health in our children.
By Madeline Fisher
But the GardenFit results convey a larger message about the complexities of battling a health condition that has also become an environmental problem. When obesity stems not just from the summertime play environment, but also from the food environment, the school environment, and the built environment of streets and cities, just how do you fight it?
“On all fronts” seems to be the answer, which is why a group of CALS and SMPH researchers has embarked on a much larger effort. Working with the Bruce-Guadalupe Community School, a Latino charter school affiliated with the United Community Center in Milwaukee, a team that includes Carrel, Dennis and Schoeller will examine the lives and surroundings of 350 students in painstaking detail: what they eat, where they play and how they get to school, as well as their levels of body fat, muscular strength and endurance, and the amount of energy they expend.
Based on what it learns, the team then hopes to offer the community ideas for reshaping school and neighborhood settings so that they naturally encourage behaviors like walking, playing outside and eating nutritious food, says Carrel—rather than constantly asking kids to choose these healthy options over less healthy but more enticing ones. Not that parents and doctors should stop teaching children to make wise choices, he adds. “But I think we need to change the environment a little bit to allow healthy options to be our default.”
As he contemplates the potential of this approach, Dennis recalls the sabbatical break he spent in Costa Rica with his wife and three kids last fall. In the rural town where the family stayed, the electricity went out with nearly every rainstorm (not to mention one hurricane). Not that this really mattered. The house had no television and Dennis’ kids had left their video games in Madison. The only screen time they got was a periodic e-mail exchange with friends back home and an occasional movie rental over the computer.
So, naturally, Dennis’ kids got bored. And then, in what might seem like a minor miracle to some parents, they went outside to play—climbing trees, running around and making their own fun, just like all the other kids in the neighborhood.
Tags: Children, Nutrition, Nutritional Science, obesity
Posted in Communities, Featured, Health, Spring 2011 | 1 Comment »