Fast food vs. healthful habits: It's a tug of war for teenagers
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It's lunchtime at Ballard High School, and the noontime bell triggers an exodus of students from campus. Students with cars head to nearby McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut.
The fat from the burgers and tacos makes them drowsy and lethargic, with enough calories for an entire day. In class, they sit in adult-sized desks, made wider and taller over the years to accommodate bigger kids. After school, many will drive home, not walk, and will play video games, not sports.
Too many will become obese.
Surgeon General David Satcher recently reported that a growing number of U.S. children are sedentary, weak and fat. Nearly three times as many teens are overweight today than were 20 years ago, Satcher's report says.
Satcher calls for sweeping action in school: making gym class more frequent and effective, cafeteria food healthier and health class more focused on nutrition and exercise.
But schools face a tough challenge as they try to counteract the influences of sedentary parents, fast-food-eating peers, mixed media messages about food and body image, and a society increasingly averse to daily exercise.
In 1999, 13 percent of children and 14 percent of adolescents in the United States were overweight, according to the government report.
In King County, half of all adults admitted in 1996 they were overweight, said Gary Goldbaum, a chronic-disease and injury-control officer for Public Health — Seattle & King County. Those statistics are of increasing concern as studies show the range of medical risks linked to weight.
"It's impressive, it's sobering, and it's going up," Goldbaum said. "Obesity is epidemic."
Healthful lunches
The glittering cafeteria at Ballard High boasts a salad bar, a vegetarian-food line and an array of healthful food choices thoughtfully put together by school-district nutritionists: low-cal, low-fat, high-nutrition. Strict guidelines mandate that school lunches provide the recommended daily allowance of vitamins, iron and protein, and that fewer than 30 percent of the calories offered come from fat.
But only about 400 of the school's 1,600 students eat there daily. Ballard's "open campus" allows upperclassmen to leave the school grounds for lunch.
Many who do eat in the cafeteria never take a fruit or vegetable, said lunchroom assistant Rene Routier. She points out the supply of juice, sold in cans in an attempt to counteract the pull of the Coca-Cola vending machines.
In recent years, attempts to restrict access to soda and candy vending machines in schools have run into powerful lobbying efforts of what Anita Finch, administrative dietician for the Seattle school district, calls "the Coke and Hershey industry."
But while Coke machines get much of the attention, Finch said the key to reducing obesity is exercise.
"We're just a community of people that have really slowed down," Finch said. "If we became more active and ate school lunches, we'd all be in shape."
While Ballard's lunch program is considered one of the best in the district, schools say they need more help from parents.
Poor eating and sedentary living have multiple causes: kids often skip breakfast; heavy academic and social schedules push aside exercise time; busy working parents cannot always pack healthful lunches.
Anisa Hersi, Idil Sheika and Yordanos Paulos, all 15, sit together at a lunch table. Some days, Idil and Yordanos go next door to Toshi's Teriyaki or catch a ride to Burger King.
"Their food is bad," Hersi concedes, laughing.
"A lot of people go out to eat, though, because it's crowded in here," Sheika says.
Ballard High School principal David Engle was making the rounds of the cafeteria that day when he had a conversation with three ninth-graders about their lunches. All were nursing cans of soda.
"I said, 'Is that your lunch?' and they said 'Yes' and I said, 'Imagine a little heap of sugar, that's what you're drinking,' " Engle said. "They looked a little sheepish."
Soda-pop paradox
The omnipresent vending machines present a dilemma for Seattle's public schools — something of a fitness Catch-22. For example, Ballard has an exclusive contract with Coke. Sales of Coke at the school last year generated $35,888 for student activities, including athletics.
So the brand that helps fund students' physical fitness also helps undermine it.
Janis Harsila attended Ballard High in the early 1970s. There were no pop machines then; the vending machines dispensed chilled apples. Harsila now is project coordinator for SNAC, the Seattle Nutrition Action Consortium, which goes into poorer schools to teach children to cook and taste new, healthful foods. But those can seem small weapons in the battle against sedentary habits, such as watching television and playing video games.
"Moms will drive their children to the bus stops," she said. "I saw that new (electric scooter) device and thought, 'Well, I guess we don't even need legs anymore.' "
Time also has become an enemy to fitness. Students often don't get enough time at lunch (typically 20 minutes) to eat the better foods, Harsila said.
"It takes longer for them to chew fruits and vegetables," she said. "The chicken McNuggets just slide right down."
In Wendy Cunningham's health class, students watched a video on sexual harassment, chins cupped in their hands. "It's not how it was when I was younger," Cunningham said. "The kids are a lot different. They don't want to be active. They're lazy. Americans in general are fairly lazy."
In her lifetime-sports class, Cunningham, a former personal trainer, tries to get students interested in tai chi or dance as well as doing daily crunches and push-ups. Many of them are out of shape, but eventually they start to enjoy themselves; some take up walking or yoga on their own time. But Cunningham thinks fitness intervention must come earlier.
"Kids learn it when they're little," she said. "By the time they get to high school, they either are physically active or they're not."
Sheika, Hersi and Paulos like the Tae-bo and yoga in their lifetime-sports class a lot more than standard physical education.
"If you have regular gym class, the guys just want to play with each other, and they don't pass you the ball, and you get frustrated," Hersi said.
Inspiration to exercise
Despite the growing problem of obesity, Seattle schools have some of the highest Presidential Fitness scores in the nation, said Bud Turner, physical-education coordinator for the district.
Kids scored in the 70th percentile on the voluntary test. The trick, said Turner, has been cutting out things like basketball as a class and bringing in options like aerobics, yoga, climbing and fly-fishing that encourage lifetime movement. Down come the posters of Michael Jordan, Turner said, and up go pictures of kids on bikes and skateboards.
"It's not just P.E. for a few kids, for the athletic elite," Turner said. "It's P.E. for all kids, regardless of skill level."
In Erin Bailey's five P.E. classes, five or six of her students are "thoroughly obese," she said, unable to complete the most basic tests of endurance, failing to run a mile in 15 minutes.
"It's lack of parents motivating their kids to go out and play," Bailey said. "America has so many obese people, and they're a bad influence on their kids."
At Ballard, students are required to take four semesters of physical education to graduate, but that requirement can be waived because of schedule constraints. The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, of which Turner is a member, has been pushing for a daily class in physical education. The surgeon general's report also suggests it.
Goldbaum, of the health department, applauds the schools for their efforts to promote physical activity but said even more needs to be done.
"I think they can also embed clear messages in school," he said. "They can get rid of Coke machines and get rid of the overt promotion of unhealthful products. Little steps add up over time."
He also said schools alone can't win the battle for children's fitness.
"We put an awful lot of responsibility on the schools," he said. "And a lot more belongs to the parents."