Weight of The Nation HBO Series Must Watch

Even if you're not in health or education, you must watch Weight of the Nation from HBO and NIH/CDC. Happy #ntaahperd

A Pac(ked) Nutrition Infographic

@JoeyFeith from http://www.thephysicaleducator.com posted this great Nutrition Poster using classic Pac Man characters and I think its such a smart way to present content in a visually appealing format (well at least for us older folk who grew up playing classic arcade and video games).   Keep up all the great work you're doing Joey & Crew! PDF

Choose My Plate: Good or Bad? (poll)

Here is the USDA's newest Food Guide logo - Choose My Plate. New Logos of all types and even separate areas can be found here at the USDA site. It looks like they wanted to separate the physical activity from the nutrition which allowed them to simplify the number of elements needed. What do you think?

Try this audience polling system at Poll Everywhere

Try this audience polling system at Poll Everywhere

Food Pyramid Shifting to Plate Palette

Today we will see the unveiling of a new USDA nutrition guideline icon and image campaign. The Pyramid, even the updated one was woeful and not clear enough for children and adults alike. Alot of kids I know were not clear on the message it was trying to convey...and how many millions did we spend to update and revise and modernize and promote that over the past 6 years.  I know Dr. Brian Wansink of Cornell's Mindful Eating project and many other experts have been in the revising process for a "long time" so it will be great to see if the image can match the intent and communicate to both children, teens, and adults. Let us know what you think of all the changes and how will you use this new image and tools to teach your students.

More $ from USDA for fruits and veggies in schools

Good news as we continue our pursuit of healthier children, schools and communities as the USDA announced more money for schools to bring more fruits and veggies. Now I think bringing more food is good, I really think we need to support bigger initiatives that encompass the entire community including the family in raising healthier children.  At AAHPERD I met up with PE guru Dolly Lamdin and she was explaining their UT Elementary School initiative WellNest that does all of the above and recently received some great press. 

Families engage in WellNest Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM) Nights where they participate in fitness activities, participate in cooking demos, take nutrition classes and leave with a bag of farm fresh organic vegetables each time. It is our belief that with this support the whole family will work together to enjoy a healthy and active lifestyle. 

For more info check out:
Website http://www.utelementary.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=123385&type=d&termREC_ID=&pREC_ID=244357
Blog http://blogs.utexas.edu/utes_wellness/
Videos http://www.youtube.com/user/kniper1


Click here to read more from Yahoo: USDA funds more fruits and veggies for school kids

USDA Nutrition Guidelines 2010 (201)

The USDA announced previously the Dietary Guidelines for 2010 but they finally released the document that emphasizes a better balance of nutrition and physical activity (PA) along with a limiting in processed, high-fat, high-sugar, high-fat foods.

Image via WikipediaHow can you use these new guidelines in your programs to help your students be more physically educated and healthy for a lifetime? Please leave a comment below on how you might bring these guidelines into our St.Mary's experience so that the after-school students can learn and explore what the government recommends in terms of healthy living.

Press Release
Executive Summary
Selected Messages for Consumers
Backgrounder
Questions and Answers

Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010
(Policy Document)

Balancing nutrition, physical activity to avoid obesity is focus of new dietary guidelines [NEWS AND FEATURES]

nutritionguide2011

Related articles

• New U.S. Diet Guidelines: What Not to Eat (webmd.com)
• Dietary Guidelines Call for Eating Less (online.wsj.com)
• Eat Less, Eat Better, Exercise More - And Here's How (blogs.wsj.com)

McDonald's sued over Happy Meals

CBC News - Consumer Life - McDonald's sued over Happy Meals

Should McDonald's be held accountable for their marketing and "nutrition" machinery they call Happy Meals?

Elementary school practices fall short of national recommendations for diet and physical activity (RWJF)

New Report Highlights Changes Needed to Support Healthy Eating and Physical Activity in U.S. Elementary Schools

Elementary school practices fall short of national recommendations for diet and physical activity.

A comprehensive new report from Bridging the Gap and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that elementary schools across the nation commonly offer their students junk food and soda, serve meals that don’t meet current dietary guidelines, and provide little time for physical activity.

The report, School Policies and Practices to Improve Health and Prevent Obesity: National Elementary School Survey Results, examined practices that affect nutrition, physical activity and obesity prevention for tens of millions of students. Its conclusions are critical for informing the Child Nutrition Reauthorization legislation, including policies related to competitive foods and school meals.

Among the key findings from the 2007–08 school year:

• Nearly two-thirds of public elementary school students were able to purchase competitive foods or beverages on campus. These items, sold or served outside of school meal programs, often included soda, candy, cookies and french fries.

• Meals served through the National School Lunch Program often included higher-fat items such as pizza, french fries, and 2% or whole milk.

• Only 20 percent of public school third-graders were offered daily physical education, and only 18 percent were offered at least 150 minutes of weekly physical education, as recommended by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education.

More here

http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/bridgingthegap20101123mongraphrevised.pdf

http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/btg201006.pdf

http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/64429companionbrief.pdf

Utterli Utterlicious - Podcasting for health

Ate a cup of whole-wheat spaghetti and chicken marsala.

Mobile post sent by ExergameLab using Utterli. Replies.

Utterlicious

Podcast your dining experiences! Upload photos of your meals and share delicious descriptions of the foods consumed.

If you enjoy your food, you'll be more mindful when you eat it. If you're mindful when you eat, you'll be conscious of what you're putting in your body. If you're conscious of what you're putting in your body, you'll be likely to choose healthier foods (most of the time, anyway.)

My exergaming colleague Biray Alsac (Befitt with Biray) showed me this website that allows you to upload audio, video, photos, and text to your Utterli account, which you can in turn share with your friends. Always the fitness "Maverick" of social networking, Befitt teaches her students how to use technology to assist their fitness and wellness plans. She created the Utterlicious month long podcast challenge to help us all be more mindful of what we eat. There have been many past research projects that made participants photograph everything they eat and many of them showed a change (at least in short-term) in eating patterns. But, isn't that what most of us in the health, recreation, wellness, fitness, physical activity, physical education, and therapy fields want for our audience...to be more mindful of our actions, bodies, thoughts, food as well as our impact on others and the environment.

Wouldn't it be nice (channeling some Beach Boys here) to have all the food you eat tracked using something like Utterli or one of the other mobile device. Once the meal is loaded to a website like CalorieLab, (featured elsewhere) the nutrition values would be added to your daily intake. For example, you eat at PF Chang's and order the Chang's Chicken in Soothing Lettuce Wraps (thanks Julie), all of the info including the calories (energy intake) would be collected. And since your mobile device probably has a heart rate monitor, GPS, accelerometer, or pedometer assessing your physical activity levels (See miCoach, GameBullet, Sony F305, iPhone, Flaik, Sportio, Bones in Motion, Loopt, Motion Based, PerDiemco or others featured in an earlier post). - your energy expenditure would be tracked. The intake and expenditure would be automatically calculated and it would really show you what you're doing or not doing to your body. Hmmm...
[Cross-posted to Exergame Lab]

CalorieLab

Wow - now this is what we've needed for a long time - CalorieLab. One place to find out the nutritional values meals from fast food joints and restaurants. And here is the rest of it.