Schools are bastions of learning, places where the nation’s next leaders are educated and cultivated. While California schools have long concentrated on academic education, a great deal of emphasis is now being placed on student nutrition and physical fitness. With more than 28 percent of students statewide overweight, and diseases such as diabetes and arthritis on the rise at alarming rates for children, the issue of children’s health is gaining far more attention in public schools.

Childhood obesity rates have doubled
Increases in childhood obesity have caused a nationwide focus on nutritional standards, and widespread changes in the types of food that are served to students in public schools. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percent of the nation’s children who are obese has doubled in the last 30 years. In an effort to address this growing problem, federal and state legislation has changed the types of food served to kids in public schools. But in some schools, the changes have been underway for a few years already.

“Our school districts were already well into compliance before any of these mandates came down,” said Jessicka Einbund, a site manager with Santa Clarita Valley School Food Services Agency.

Einbund, president of Santa Clarita JPA Chapter 782, said they serve six lunch options a day to more than 40 schools, including salad bars, vegetarian meals and kosher options. She said the agency is always looking for ways to make food healthier and more appealing to students.

“We’ve changed so many things on our menus,” she said. “Anything we can do to make it better, we are always right there on top of it.”

Schools respond to nationwide problems
According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, three out of four overweight adolescents are likely to be obese as adults. Additionally, the American Diabetes Association states that 33 percent of boys and 39 percent of girls born in 2000 will develop diabetes if current trends continue. The skyrocketing levels of overweight children point to two serious health issues facing the state today: unhealthy diets and low levels of physical activity among children.

Child Nutrition Coordinator Ilene Poland, a member of Oxnard Elementary Chapter 272, said her school district started making serious changes in the school menus a couple years ago. Poland said major attention is given to the amount of fat, sugar and salt in foods served to students. While attempting to eliminate fried foods—most schools now bake fare like French fries—Poland said fresh food is paramount for children.

“I think we can incorporate more fresh fruits and vegetables,” she said.

Unhealthy shift toward pre-packaged foods
With 22 years in nutrition, Poland said she has seen sweeping changes in school nutrition, and unfortunately, not all have been positive. She said that while meals are getting progressively healthier, there has been a major shift toward pre-packaged foods.

“They (school districts) do it for cost reasons, but they do it with the products we would have made ourselves,” Poland said, re-emphasizing the value of whole foods.

Piner-Olivet Union School District physical education paraeducator Nancy Wood said while children need proper exercise everyday, physical education programs are often the first to see the axe when budget issues arise in school districts. Wood said she has noticed an increase in overweight students, so she tries to set personal goals with them to effect change gently.

Technological advances have led to far more children sitting in front of televisions and computers after school rather than getting exercise outside, and Wood said it’s evident.

“The kids that are in organized sports are far more into doing physical activity than those who go home and sit in front of video games,” Wood said. “What I see now, unfortunately, are more overweight kids.”

Education key to dietary changes
Einbund said she spends a lot of time in classrooms educating children about how to eat properly. Providing growing children with healthy options for meals encourages them to choose to eat healthier at home, she said.

“It helps us serve the community because the children are learning how to make healthy meals,” Einbund said. “I think the schools have done a great job in rethinking how they need to be fed and have their fitness needs taken care of.”

Einbund said at the Santa Clarita agency, administrators and classified employees work hand-in-hand to provide the best meals possible for students. Sherri Weimer, assistant director of the Santa Clarita Valley School Food Services Agency, said the staggering increase in overweight and diabetic children is likely related to their eating habits. She said the agency tries to encourage healthy eating habits at home, which isn’t always an easy task.

“This is truly the first generation where junk food has been in the home,” Weimer said, noting that since school food service agencies can’t control what is eaten at home, there is a need to provide more nutritious food than the law requires. “A little bit of training with the kids might make a world of difference. We just have to get these kids to think about what they’re eating.”

Hands-on lessons for kids
The Santa Clarita agency has a program where kids cook meals for their parents, teachers and administrators. Weimer said the program has been successful in promoting healthy nutritional habits and educating children about how to make healthy meals.

“The bottom line is we all want to see the kids eat healthy and live healthy,” she said. Poland said parents need to observe what their children are eating and make changes at home. She recently displayed the foods served in her district during an open house at one of the schools. She said parents were quite impressed with the quality of the school food. At the end of the day, she said the parents are the ones who really have the ability to make changes inside and outside of school.

“The more parents push for healthy food, the more the school districts will have to provide it,” Poland said.

Alternatives to unhealthy food aren’t always available though. Frances Coyne, a before-and after-school site manager, and member of Fresno Chapter 125, said she’s encountered some resistance to providing healthier food. Coyne used to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to the children as snacks, but due to changes in administrative policy, she now has to choose snacks from a pre-determined list provided by the school district. The fresh fruits, vegetables and milk she used to purchase for the kids aren’t on the list, while cookies and other snacks are.

“They’re not providing a whole lot of healthy options,” Coyne said. “We have access to wonderful fruits and vegetables in California, but we don’t take advantage of it.”

Public interest groups urge changes
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, California campuses will serve more than 535 million school lunches this year. While recent legislation in California has sought to provide healthier options to students, public interest groups nationwide are focusing attention on nutrition and health needs. A recent report by the American Dietetic Association, Society for Nutrition Education, and School Nutrition Association urges changes in children’s eating habits at school and at home. The report calls attention to the availability of high-fat foods to children, as well as the social environment associated with some of these foods, such as fast food. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 2 percent of school-aged children meet the Food Guide Pyramid serving recommendations for all five major food groups, and less than 30 percent eat the recommended amount from any one of the five major food groups.

Substantial percentages of children also do not engage in physical activity, further contributing to weight problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 40 percent of 12th graders were enrolled in physical education in 2003, and participation in physical activity only declines with age.

Wood said she believes schools should provide classes to elementary school students on health and nutrition, in conjunction with a full physical education program. She said the recent news on childhood weight issues and diabetes has been disturbing.

“Because of all the publicity of childhood obesity and diabetes, I hope there’s going to be a push for more physical education in schools,” Wood said. “It’s needed.”

Working toward a healthy future
Child nutrition programs have the largest number of participants enrolled and the least funding for nutrition education, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Investing today will no doubt curb the future costs of obesity and related illnesses—estimated at $28 billion in California last year. All members interviewed for this story said additional funding to provide nutrition education programs, healthier school food and more physical education programs would enable schools to address the growing childhood obesity problem in the state.