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[转贴]Scotland schools may give grades for diet and fitness
白色雅达@2004-05-30 07:12
It's pretty sad it has come to this.....
http://www.sundayherald.com/42319
Schools may give grades for diet and fitness
Education chiefs consider giving children marks for health on report cards and issuing advice at parents’ nights, in war on obesity
By Liam McDougall, Health Correspondent
SCOTS children will be marked on fitness and diet in school report cards, under radical plans being considered to combat the obesity epidemic.
Other moves being examined include educating adults about the merits of healthy-eating programmes in schools during parents’ nights.
The plans, being worked on by Glasgow education chiefs, are part of a drive to encourage more parents to take responsibility for their children’s health. Council officials in the city – where almost one in five men and more than a quarter of women are now obese – are drawing up the plans following the publication of a damning report by the Commons select committee on health on Thursday which predicted that in the future thousands would lose limbs and their sight from fat-related illnesses.
The report cited the recent case of a three-year-old whose death was partly blamed on extreme obesity, and warned that some children were so overweight they were in danger of “choking on their own fat” while they slept.
It also demanded annual weigh-ins for children, who would take the results home to their parents.
Under the Scottish report card scheme, however, fitness levels of children could be assessed and concerns could be raised about the child’s diet . Council officials want the cards to encourage parents to pressurise their children into eating the healthier options available in schools.
Steven Purcell, Glasgow’s education convener, said: “ I have asked officials to look into the idea of using the traditional report card as a way of bringing up issues of fitness and diet. There could be an area where the school could talk about the child’s fitness and raise concerns about their diet. ”
At parents’ nights, Purcell said, parents could be taken to the dinner hall and shown healthy food options available to pupils, and urged to talk to nutritionists and GPs present to answer questions about diet and fitness.
The plans follow a visit to Finland by Purcell and a delegation from Glasgow last month to witness how that country has turned round its abysmal health record. Purcell said that while Glasgow had a better range and more nutritious meal options in its schools than Helsinki, he admitted that the problem lay with educating parents.
Purcell added: “All we can do is try to inform them, because sometimes at home parents are contradicting the message we are giving by allowing children to eat unhealthily. ”
This weekend, the proposals were given a wider welcome by health and nutrition experts who called on the scheme to be considered by education authorities across Scotland. The latest national figures show that 21% of adult Scots – more than 850,000 people – are classified as obese and have a higher risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes, disability and some cancers. Almost one in 12 children are obese by the age of two.
First Minister Jack McConnell visited Port Glasgow in January to launch a £24 million drive to curb obesity among children. However, concern remains high among health experts at the number of children being fed unhealthy diets and taking little exercise.
The Sunday Herald has been told of a recent example where a health visitor in Port Glasgow saw a family blending sausage suppers and feeding them to their baby to wean it onto a solid diet. They said they had been advised to follow their own tastes in food.
Dr David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said that in extreme cases parents of obese children could face charges of neglect. “Allowing a child to become so obese that it causes serious health problems is neglect, as long as the parents have the appropriate knowledge about nutrition ,” he said.
“Parents do have a responsibility , but the commercial retail industry must take some of the blame. Children aged three can’t be expected to know that a food that tastes nice and is endorsed by a cartoon character is going to cause them to become obese and kill them.”
Dr John Reilly, a lecturer in human nutrition at Glasgow University, has called for more parents to encourage their children to play outside, instead of allowing them to sit in front of the television or play computer games. “This is a major public health time-bomb,” he said. “What we need is action to tackle this issue over the next five to 10 years.”
A key recommendation made by the select committee was for a calorie content “traffic light” on food. Products would be given a red, amber or green mark depending on the amount they contain.
However, the scheme has been attacked for being too simplistic, and runs the risk of branding healthy foods as “bad”. Joanna Blythman, a leading investigative food journalist and author of The Food Our Children Eat: How To Get Children To Like Good Food, said the government should instead focus on warning the public about the dangers of eating processed foods filled with additives.
She said: “The food industry will use the traffic light system to promote a whole new raft of seemingly healthy products. They may have less salt, but they will be very heavily processed and full of additives.
“Avocados, which are loaded with vitamin E and essential fatty acids, and cheese would be red foods under the proposals, but these foods are really healthy.
“This traffic light system is just a means of allowing the government to get out of its responsibility to put across the key health message of not eating processed foods.”
At the launch of the strategy against obesity in January, McConnell pledged to recruit 600 “active school co-ordinators” to encourage pupils to get fit.
He added: “The health of our nation depends on us all taking individual responsibility for ourselves – and each other. I want everyone in Scotland to encourage children to get off the couch and get moving.”
Lizard@2004-05-30 15:11
wow~
觉得有点超出academic的范围了..但是如果有效,也是和好的做法
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