School anti-obesity project offers encouraging report

No one is allowed to say “Yuk” when the lesson turns to healthy eating at Rockford School District’s Montessori Magnet School.

Because of that rule, things such as broccoli, tofu, leeks and spinach have become part of the students’ vocabulary and — while at school — part of their diets in connection with a Fit Families Project pilot program to address childhood obesity by introducing them to healthier lifestyle options. The program began in the 2007-08 school year and leaders presented a first report to the community Wednesday night.

A written report on how the children responded in the first year of the program is scheduled to be available to the public by the end of December.

“Our goal, as we look at health and food,” Montessori School principal Susan Haney-Bauer said, “is to really educate children about food, nutrition and how to make healthier choices about food.

“Our second goal is to impact the choice of what is offered to breakfast and lunch programs at school since many of our children take breakfast and lunch at school through the commodities program, and also to provide information to parents on choices for a healthier lifestyle not only for their children but, hopefully, for themselves.”

Dr. Antonia Demas, director of the Food Studies Institute and creator of the Food is Elementary curriculum being used in the project, said the written report will show “statistically significant results” about the students’ knowledge about nutrition, food and health and lifestyle practices.

“The preliminary results are extremely encouraging,” Demas said. “They all are positive and show behavior change, as it affects health, has already occurred.” She said long-term results can show improvements in the students’ body mass index readings and weight “but we’re not going to do any poking or prodding.”

 The project is planned to last for at least five years and will expanded to the after school programs operated by the Discovery Center Museum at Gregory, Lathrop, Nashold, Spring Creek and Summerdale schools where, Discovery Center executive director Sarah Wolf said, 94.7 percent of the total of 600 students qualify for free or reduced-price breakfast and school lunch programs.

A $26,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Northern Illinois will support the expansion.

Demas, whose curriculum is being used in more than 1,400 schools, said children take the program seriously and, in a previous project in Baltimore, Md., statistics showed that the program could be considered cost effective if it prevented just one case of diabetes.

“I’m not saying this is easy work,” Demas said in complimenting the Rockford project. “It’s hard to get programs like these set up, but the kids get it and they take it home to their families. We need to look at the real cost of treatment and the cost of education. I think education always wins out.”

Haney-Bauer said continuation of the program at the Montessori School will include books being sent home beginning in January to help parents learn the same things their children are receiving at school and a gardening component in the spring.

“Children are talking about health, they are talking about food in a different way than they ever have talked about it before,” Haney-Bauer said. “We’ve raised their consciousness level in thinking about their own personal health and the impact of their choices on their health, but there is still much to be done.”

Staff writer Mike DeDoncker can be reached at 815-987-1382 or mdedoncker@rrstar.com.