Nutrition more than elementary for MV-Whisman schools Nutrition more than elementary for MV-Whisman schools (July 29, 2005)

By Katie Vaughn

Spurred by the rising number of overweight students and their decreasing level of physical fitness, two Mountain View-Whisman elementary schools are joining forces with the Camino Medical Group to pilot a nutrition program this fall.

The Youth Nutrition Outreach Program, run by the Camino Medical Group, will be implemented in fifth grade classes at Bubb and Landels elementary schools. Two elementary schools each in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are also taking part in the program.

Both educators and Camino Medical Group pediatricians have noticed that children's general weight is creeping upward. Data from the California Center for Public Health Advocacy shows that between 22 and 27 percent of children in Santa Clara County are overweight. The state childhood obesity rate is roughly 26 percent, while the national rate is approximately 16 percent, said Amy Marcich, the Camino Medical Group nutrition program coordinator who will teach the courses.

Furthermore, according to the Lucille Packard Foundation for Children's Health, only 20.8 percent of Santa Clara County fifth graders met all physical fitness standards in 2004, down from 24.2 percent the year before and less than the 24.8 percent statewide average.

Instead of focusing on obesity itself, Marcich said, the program will focus on teaching kids to make healthy choices about food and exercise, in part by providing information on nutrition

"This intervention will focus on healthy lifestyles as opposed to directly discussing obesity," Marcich said. "We will be targeting obesity-related behaviors, such as eating more fruits and vegetables and being more active."

In the classes, scheduled to begin this September, students will keep a two-day diet log to learn whether they made healthy decisions, and use pedometers in a classroom exercise on physical activity. Additionally, students will monitor advertisements that air with children's television programs. Food messages account for half of these ads, Marcich said, with 44 percent of them in the junk food category.

The program targets fifth graders partly because that's the grade for which physical fitness assessments are taken. Also, Marcich said, fifth grade is the time when students start looking to their peers in addition to their parents as role models -- meaning what their friends could affect their eating and exercise habits as much or more than their parents do.

Ten- and 11-year olds also fall into the developmental stage in which they begin making more independent decisions, said Alicia Henderson, the former Landels principal involved with the nutrition program. (Henderson was since made principal of Graham Middle School.) This makes it a critical time for students to be armed with the knowledge they need to make healthy choices, she said.

"We can see obesity in kindergarten," Henderson said. "But it happens more in fourth and fifth grades."

Landels has offered a nutrition program for the past three years for its kindergarten through fifth grade students. Henderson said the Camino Medical Group program will "carry on the information the whole school's been learning about healthy choices."

The nutrition classes, which will be held once a week for eight to 10 weeks, will be part of regular fifth grade science classes. Marcich has structured them to fulfill the educational requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The program is funded by a grant from Applied Materials, a local semiconductor materials and services corporation.

E-mail Katie Vaughn at kvaughn@mv-voice.com

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