Slimming down at school

Racquel Hall used to be your typical burger-munching teen, scarfing down junk food at every opportunity. Her body showed it, too. In 2000, as she headed into ninth grade, the 5-foot-1-inch teen weighed 202 pounds.

Then Hall joined a popular school program called Ecotech, a specialized learning community focused on hands-on ecology, within University City High School in Philadelphia. There, Hall learned to grow, cook and sell fruits and vegetables harvested in the school's extensive outdoor and indoor gardens. She also discovered the joys of eating them.

Now 16, Hall packs 45 fewer pounds on her frame, prefers carrots to potato chips, and says she'll "never go back" to unhealthy living.

It's a great success story, but all too rare. Today's schools are filled with more obese and overweight children than ever, some at risk for -- if not already suffering from -- high cholesterol, Type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure and early cardiovascular disease.

Because most obese kids become obese adults, experts have recognized that stopping the problem early represents the best hope for success in saving both lives and health-care dollars. As a result, kids have been targeted by both government and nonprofit groups as the front line in the national fight against fat. And schools -- which control kids' daily environments -- have become the primary battleground.

Legislators at the federal and state levels have introduced bills to get rid of soda and junk food in schools. Federal funding for physical education programs has increased 20 percent this year, from $50 million in 2002 to $60 million. The U.S. surgeon general has called for a return to daily gym classes and healthier food in schools. Numerous school-based programs have popped up around the country aimed at luring youths to eat better and exercise.

Still, millions of overweight kids continue to ride buses to schools where soda, candy bars and potato chips are served daily, and where they aren't expected to break a sweat in gym class more than two days a week, if that. Only one state -- Illinois -- requires daily PE for all students through 12th grade, but even many of those students evade gym class by cadging waivers to attend other classes. Meanwhile, cash-starved school districts have signed lucrative contracts with soda vending-machine companies.

Most school-based programs reviewed two years ago by the Center for Weight and Health proved unable to significantly cut weight, especially in the long term. Newer programs are just beginning to be studied.

"There's probably no 'killer app' out there that's going to do it," says Michael Murphy, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, who has studied the effectiveness of weight-loss programs.

Yet, as Hall's experience at Ecotech shows, solutions are emerging. Lacking a magic bullet, schools, health experts and communities have begun to create a wide range of programs across the country that are beginning to eat away at myths about what young people will and won't do to get and stay healthy.

Myth No. 1: The PlayStation Generation won't play.

In gym class at West Middle School in Downey, Calif., videogames aren't the enemy.

Children ride specially equipped exercycles hooked to videogames. Their fitness scores, including heart rate, are entered into customized computer game programs. The fitter they are, the more "power" is awarded to the characters in the game, which typically features bike races set in exotic locales, such as the surface of the moon.

"It's great," says Liz Javier, 13, an eighth-grader who has been in the Cyberobics program for three years. "Sometimes you don't even know you're working out because it's like playing video games." Yet, Javier says, she gets sweatier doing Cyberobics than she does running around outdoors in more traditional PE classes.

The program was developed by gym teacher Daniel Latham 10 years ago as a way to attract tech-oriented kids.

"Cyberobics links together the best of their world and the best of my world," says Latham. "It's the most popular class on this campus."

Myth No. 2. Kids won't eat foods they know are good for them.

When nutritionist and consultant Dr. Antonia Demas began using the "ugh" foods from the federally subsidized school lunch program -- lentils, brown rice and beans -- many cafeteria cooks predicted kids wouldn't touch the results in a million years. Demas says they were wrong.

"When food is made in a way that's fun and sensory-based, kids will eat anything that's nutritious," says Demas, who heads up the nonprofit Food Studies Institute in Trumansburg, N.Y. "Schools say they can't serve healthy stuff because kids won't eat it, but they will if they're educated about it."

For elementary-school diners, Demas serves up ethnic cuisine, such as Brazilian black beans, Egyptian barley and peas, and red lentil curry. For tougher-to-please teens, Demas recommends a whole corn tortilla with beans and guacamole or a veggie pizza made with whole grains, accompanied by a salad, brown rice and fruit. "Always fruit and salad with every meal," she says.

Her program, "Food is Elementary," offered in more than 100 schools nationwide, uses games, songs, science experiments and other hands-on activities to teach kids that "healthy" isn't a bad word.

"It's amazing to see children come in at the beginning of sixth grade and say, 'I won't eat that,' or 'What is that?'"says Zenobia Barlow, director of the nonprofit Center for Ecoliteracy. "Then, by the time they have prepared a fruit salad, they are licking pomegranate juice off the bottom of the bowl."

AMERICA'S GROWING NUMBERS: KIDS AND OBESITY

Percentage of U.S. children and adolescents who are overweight (2002): 20

Percentage of U.S. teens 12 to 19 who are overweight: 16

Percentage increase in that number from 1988 to 1994: 11

Percentage of U.S. children 6 to 11 who are overweight: 15

Percentage of U.S. children 2 to 5 who are overweight: 10

Percentage of schools that offered soft drinks in vending machines in 2000: 76.3

Percentage of schools that offered 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice in machines in 2000: 55.6

Percentage of children who get the daily recommended number of servings of fruits, vegetables and grains: 2

Percentage of high school students who are physically active for 20 minutes or more, five days a week, in PE classes: 19

Drop in percentage of daily enrollment in PE classes among high school students from 1991 to 1995: 19, from 44 to 25

Number of children who have cholesterol levels too high for good heart health (the optimum level is 170 or less): 1 in 3

Percentage of fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders who did not meet California's physical fitness goals in 2001 testing: 75

SOURCES: Fifth Annual Report on Commercialism in the Schools, October 2002, by Arizona State University's Commercialism in Education Research Unit; Centers for Disease Control; National Institutes of Health; U.S. Department of Agriculture; Children's Healthy Heart Center, N.Y. Presbyterian Hospital.