Better After-School Snack Choices Boost Nutrition for Low-Income Kids
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From the University of California, Davis: “School lunches and vending machines aren’t the only places to look for ways to improve students’ nutrition. Modest changes in the kinds of snacks offered at after-school programs can also have a significant positive impact on children’s diets, UC Davis researchers report in the September 2006 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.”
The study suggests that a healthy snack menu in an after-school program can help low-income children—those at highest risk of obesity—consume more fruit and less saturated fat, said lead author Diana Cassady, an assistant professor of public health sciences at UC Davis.
“Even though school food programs have very limited budgets, this study suggests that with leadership and a little bit of political will, food service for kids really can be improved,” Cassady said.
The UC Davis researchers focused on an after-school program called Students Today Achieving Results for Tomorrow, which serves some 8,000 low-income children from 44 public elementary schools in Sacramento, Elk Grove and Rio Linda.
In 2002, START changed its snack vendor and its menu in an effort to offer more fruits and vegetables, boost nutrition and save money. Kids started receiving more fresh fruit, tastier crackers, more juices and fewer dairy products. For instance, Friday’s snack of a brownie and milk was replaced with animal crackers and grape juice; Wednesday’s snack of a peach cup and graham crackers was replaced with peanut butter crackers and an apple.
Cassady and her colleagues compared the nutritional content of the new menu of 17 snacks with that of the old menu of 15 snacks. They found that the new menu boosted the children’s daily servings of fruit by 83 percent, reduced their daily consumption of saturated fat by 42 percent and cut their overall calorie intake by 7 percent. …
Richard Lincoln, program manager for Sacramento START, said the changes were well-received by students.
“There are kids coming into our program who have never had fresh produce,” Lincoln said. “We’ve found that they love getting fresh fruit, and it’s been great seeing them discover that they like it.”
If all Americans ate at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, cancer rates would drop by more than 20 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute. The NCI based the estimate on a review of 4,500 research studies.
However, only 24 percent of California’s children meet the five-a-day recommendation, Cassady said. Even fewer meet the new dietary guidelines that recommend children eat six to seven servings (or 3 to 3.5 cups) of fruit and vegetables each day for better health.
(Emphases are mine.)
Diana Cassady, an assistant professor of public health sciences at UC Davis, offers the following tips for encouraging healthy snacking in children:
1. Avoid serving desserts and chips.
2. Offer kids foods that taste good. For example, serve sliced fruits with a low-fat yogurt dip, or vegetables with a low-fat bean dip.
3. Model good eating behavior by enjoying healthy snacks with your child.
4. Eat fruit that is fresh, canned, dried or frozen. It’s all good. If you do choose canned fruit, select items packed in light syrup or fruit juice to reduce added sugar.
5. Choose only 100-percent juices to avoid added sugar in nectars and punch. But whole fruit, because it has fiber, is always a better choice than juice.
Related articles:
1. The School-Lunch Test
2. Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children
3. The Virtual Cafeteria
4. The World’s Healthiest Foods
5. Invisible Danger: Parents Look Inside the Lunchbox
5. Sugar High: Benzene in Soft Drinks
The Worsted Witch » Wake Up, America! said,
September 3, 2006 at 10:57 am
[...] If you’re interested in food politics, you’ll want to check out this week’s ALL FOOD, ALL THE TIME issue of The Nation. [...]