Foods for thought

Getting a finicky 7-year-old to snack on fruits and vegetables instead of high-fat chips and sugar-laden cookies might seem to be an uphill battle.

But, with an eye on the recent rise in childhood obesity and related health problems, a College of Health and Nursing Sciences professor is researching ways to make things easier for parents who want to improve their children's poor eating habits.

Marie Fanelli Kuczmarski, professor of nutrition and dietetics, has developed the "Got 5? Nutrition for Kids" curriculum to encourage second-graders to add new foods, particularly fruits and vegetables, to their diets. The program has been tested at an elementary school in Maryland and will be featured in coming months in the Journal of Nutrition, Education and Behavior and the Journal of School Health.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that one American child in five is overweight, a number that has doubled in the last 20-30 years. Obesity contributes to "an alarming increase in the incidence of type-2 diabetes" among children and adolescents, according to Word on Health, the NIH's newsletter for consumers. The publication also cites obesity as contributing to blood-pressure and orthopedic problems in children and says that overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults.

One reason for the problem, Kuczmarski says, is a diet high in snack foods, which have large amounts of fat and sugar, and low in fruits and vegetables. That poor diet often is combined with a lifestyle lacking in physical activity.

Nutrition literature indicates that the earlier good eating practices are established, the longer those habits will persist and the more likely a person will be to retain them as an adult. Hoping to get an early start, Kuczmarski has aimed her program at second-graders.

Because young children generally respond well to active learning, "Got 5? Nutrition for Kids" aims to encourage fruit and vegetable consumption through interactive strategies. Those include having the children taste new foods, monitor their consumption by keeping a daily calendar and set personal goals for improvement.

The primary goal is to get children to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, Kuczmarski says, which inspired the name of the project.

The curriculum was given a trial run by second-grade students at Waterloo Elementary School in Columbia, Md., and Kuczmarski says the results are heartening.

Students were provided new fruits and vegetables to sample and were asked to rate them, using hedonic scales consisting of faces, some happy and some not. They also marked daily food intake calendars, created international food alphabet posters and played games such as fruit and vegetable bingo.

As students completed sections of the curriculum, they were awarded jump ropes, Hula Hoops and other prizes promoting physical activity.

Ninety percent of the students tasted all the foods presented, from couscous and tofu pizza to asparagus, grape tomatoes, fruit salsa, kiwi and star fruit.

Kuczmarski says the study found "a significant increase in fruit intake" and some increase in vegetable consumption, although not one that was statistically significant, among the children who participated.

It also found "a significant change in students' willingness to try new foods," she says. By the end of the course, teachers and parents reported that students were asking for fruits and vegetables.

"The bottom line is that you can do this with second-graders, and you can have an impact on their diet," Kuczmarski says.

"Establishing good eating practices in elementary schoolchildren may minimize the negative dietary behaviors that occur in middle school."

The project was supported by the Dole Food Co., which provided cookbooks; the Produce Marketing Association, which provided images of fruits and vegetables; and the California Apricot Producers, which supplied apricot Beanie Babies as prizes.

Funding for the project was provided by the CHNS Center for Research Development.

--Neil Thomas, AS '76