Helping Kids Eat Right
No doubt at some point in your life, mom admonished “Don’t play with your food!” Be honest, a serving of peas scattered around the plate just might have been missed.
But for Judith L. Dodd, adjunct assistant professor, Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition, and some of her students, playing with food is learning about food – with a serving of nutrition on the side. During March, National Nutrition Month, Dodd and the students took their “food play” to the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh for what the museum dubbed, “Get Moving, Get Healthy!” The activity was part of the We Can! series, promoting healthy, physically active play, sponsored by UPMC Health Plan and the Giant Eagle Child Development Series.
“The Children’s Museum is a great place to conduct this kind of activity,” says Dodd. “They have a young clientele who are generally accompanied by parents or caregivers, which is great for exposing the whole family to good nutrition and health.” She further notes that parents take their children to the museum because they are interested in an educational experience so the kids are generally predisposed to learning.
Dodd and her students see a lot of home-schooled children and school groups, as well. “We always bring hula hoops and jump ropes because we want to highlight how important it is for kids to be active,” Dodd continues. They also offer interactive games that help children learn about foods and the food pyramid. Common items like apples are placed in a bag and children have to identify them just by touch. The kids are given clues, ‘it’s a fruit, it’s a vegetable,’ which vary depending on their age.
And how do the children do? “Surprisingly well,” Dodd reports, “Although they frequently can’t identify a real carrot, which is not too surprising since most kids today eat short-cut carrots.” There are also the occasional unfortunate errors, like mistaking healthy low-fat mozzarella sticks for beef jerky.
“We like to get a discussion going about food and nutrition. One game children seem to enjoy is fishing for food,” she points out. Once they’ve ‘caught’ the food, they have to place it in its food group or identify where it lands on the food pyramid.
For Dodd’s graduate students, this is part of the course Supervised Practice in the Community, which places students in settings that span the life cycle. “It’s an opportunity for the students to see that these are good venues to take nutrition education and to watch the interaction with the parents, who, of course don’t want their children to fail.” It could prove embarrassing for a parent if his or her child can’t identify a common, healthy food.
Nutritional Knowledge Decreasing
Despite the fact that more people, including young children, are obese, our knowledge of good eating habits seems to be on the decline. Even children’s knowledge of actual food and where it comes from is on the decline. “For some kids, they think a fruit comes in a little plastic container that you drink with a straw or you find peas in the supermarket in a can or the freezer,” laments Dodd. “And lemon juice comes from a squeeze bottle.”
She also notes that we have given people permission not to cook. “In my estimate, we are on the third generation of food illiterates. We gave up home economics in schools. We gave up the idea of home cooking. The finger that activates the microwave is the same one we use for the TV remote and, for some people, that’s probably the most exercise they get in a day.” But Dodd and her colleagues and students are trying to reverse the trend.
They are out in the community, not just in museums, but in schools and even grocery stores trying to spread the importance of good nutrition for children. “This course takes the students into various community settings,” she notes, including childcare centers, senior centers, a WIC program. They are required to go to certain core places, but at the same time, students have the option of volunteering at certain events and locations.
She cites student support of a collaborative research project designed by Carnegie Mellon University School of Design and UPMC Saint Margaret Family Health Centers called FitWits™. Created to help primarily inner city kids and their families achieve healthy lifestyles, FitWits includes fun characters like Elvis Pretzley, Monty and Jack, and Sunny Yoke to help children learn about the difference between healthy and not-sohealthy foods.
As part of Nutrition Month awareness, participants were invited to the Shadyside Market District supermarket for a scavenger hunt to track down the FitWits and the NitWits, including the Fry Girls, Lolly Parton, and Chip and the Little Dipper Crew.
“We offered the same games and activities as we did at the Children’s Museum,” says Dodd. “We also closed down the café, which didn’t endear us to the senior community who consider it home.”
Because most of the kids involved in the program already had the advantage of their FitWits education, they were fairly knowledgeable about healthy foods and the importance of activity.
Don’t Overlook an Opportunity
Books can help even the youngest children learn the ABCs of nutrition, Dodd points out. And she and her students have held story hours at local libraries and supermarkets, even developing lesson plans surrounding books like Green Eggs and Ham and The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food.
“Green Eggs and Ham is a great way to teach kids about trying new foods,” according to the lesson plan that comes complete with a recipe. But she acknowledges that it’s often the parents who make food decisions for their children with little or no input. “A parent might say ‘Oh, they won’t like that food’ when in fact, they like it very much once they’ve had a chance to sample it,” declares Dodd.
In all, Dodd is more than satisfied with the community-based activities in which she and her students participate. “There’s so much more we could do but there just aren’t enough entry points and people to get the job done. Wellness is a commodity that isn’t reimbursed and the assumption is everybody knows how to eat and everybody knows good nutrition. We know that’s just not so, and the research proves it,” Dodd concludes.