Senate bill sets nutritional guidelines to help fight obesity in school age youth. However, some fear that students with body image problems could be adversely affected by the state program.
By Mollie Vandor/Special to The Malibu Times
It’s out with the crinkle cuts and in with the fruits and nuts for Malibu and Santa Monica schools. The new school year, starting in September 2004, will see the start of a new districtwide offensive in the battle of the bulge. But solutions to what district officials call the “obesity epidemic” could lead to more problems with anorexia, bulimia and body image.
Malibu High School has gathered data on student obesity through the Health Champions Program in which body mass indexes, or BMIs, of students are measured to determine their risk for obesity. Last year, one in four Malibu High students was at risk for obesity or worse with BMIs of 85 percent or higher. “And we even had a group of students with BMIs of over 95 percent” said longtime MHS nurse Ellen Relles.
“The obesity epidemic has created a lot of awareness and it is promoting a lot of change. We are going to see a major overhaul of school food and nutrition services in the next five years” said Donna Richwine, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s nutrition specialist.
Sodas will be replaced with “fruit juice, and in vending machines there are going to be baked chips, nuts, trail mix,” and similar items, Richwine said. Currently, the hot lunch menu for SMMUSD contains such offerings as chicken nuggets with crinkle cut fries, spaghetti with meat sauce and crunch fish sticks. But, Richwine said, “we are also working to improve hot lunch menus and to make them more nutritious.”
Prodding SMMUSD’s efforts to address the obesity problem was the passage of California Senate Bill 19 in October, 2001. The bill essentially sets nutritional guidelines for elementary school lunches and cafeteria food, and offers pilot programs for middle and high schools. And SB 19 comes with “grants to schools to get them to implement new policies,” Relles explained, “and we received a grant. In our middle schools, starting with September 2004, we will have no more sodas, and any snack foods sold will be low fat and low sugar.”
But a potential problem with the district’s new emphasis on weight-consciousness is the way it will affect a student population for which “body image is so important,” MHS Principal Michael Matthews said. “And the pressure to have the perfect body is far too high.”
MHS Senior Natasha Basill said, “Malibu High is like an extreme microcosm of society when it comes to being thin and looking a certain way.”
Many of her fellow students agree that the student body is already very weight-conscious.
Carolyn Costin, clinical director for the Montecito Treatment Center and the Eating Disorders Center of California, said, “Eating disorders, like anorexia and bulimia, are a case of society overemphasizing the external versus the internal, and this city is a hotbed of that. There is a huge problem with a lot of parents in Malibu, especially mothers who are constantly on diets and going to the gym and watching their figures. The problem is that the mother might be mature enough to handle that, but the daughter might not be and she picks up on it, and if she has a predisposition for eating disorders then that triggers her to take it to the extreme. “
Although Costin said she believes the new program is a good idea because “it is a good move to let kids see that certain foods are not so good and to get good nutrition education,” she also worries that “anyone who has an eating disorder is very likely to take any information about food and abuse it and use it against themselves and take it to the extreme.”
“And, when it gets too strict or to the point of body fat testing, I am totally against it,” Costin added. “When you start comparing kids it leads to too much embarrassment and competition.”
Indeed, district officials worry about such concerns, but Relles said SMMUSD’s nutrition and health staff plans to help “students to be able to draw the line between healthy and unhealthy” behavior.
Ultimately, Costin said she believes the program’s success and the danger that it will incite increased levels of weight-consciousness in students depends on “how much pressure it puts on students to eat a certain way and how hardcore it is. And, if families don’t have some involvement, then I do not see how schools can pull this off alone.”
A major reason why the program may require parental involvement and intervention is the students’ decidedly critical attitude toward a nutritional program that stems from the schools alone. Many students simply do not want the school to dictate their eating habits.
Ultimately, most students agree that the school is influential up to a point, but is not enough to change their exercise and eating habits for good.
However, district officials are more worried that “the biggest problem is money,” Richwine said. “Especially when you start talking about healthier foods because healthier foods cost more and that is a challenge because the school district does not give food services any money.”
In fact, many MHS students, such as Senior Jaclyn Mohr, complain, “Healthy foods, like the salad bar, are a lot more expensive than less healthy things like cookies and vending machine fare.”
Despite the problems with its new food philosophy, the district maintains that adolescent obesity is a nationwide problem in need of a local solution. Shirley Watkins, the former undersecretary of the USDA, has stated that, when it comes to childhood obesity, “We can no longer afford to sit back and watch this epidemic.”
Administrators hope the combination of governmental and district programs will guarantee “all students graduate at a healthy weight, with good exercise habits and a knowledge of nutrition and health that will carry them through the remainder of their long, long lives,” Matthews said.
“Hopefully, with all of these programs, we are encouraging students to be healthier individuals now, and ask themselves, ‘How healthy am I going to be as an adult?’ ” Relles added.