Limited Impact of Banning Sweets in Schools - Health and Weight Loss

[Britni24]

In recent years school have been placed under a high amount of pressure to reduce and even eliminate unhealthy foods. Sodas, sweet treats, and birthday goodies have been banned at many schools. In large part this was done to battle the growing childhood obesity epidemic. It was believed that removing these unhealthy foods from the school systems and removing these unhealthy choices from being an option during the school day would improve student’s health. However, new research has indicated that these sweeping changes have had little to no effect on the health of students around the world. A recent study found that students that attended schools that sold junk foods did not have a greater percentage of obese and overweight students (MyHealthNewsDaily, 2012). One of the major things that this study points to is the importance of changing habits at home. Enforcing strict health rules at school on children has little to no impact if those same rules and behaviors are not found at home.

Parents play a key role in maintaining the health of their children. It is extremely important that parents and families work together to raise healthy children. Children are closely monitoring and watching the behaviors of the people that they spend the most time with during their days and weeks. It is important that children have positive role models to look up to that are making healthy decisions in their own lives. This provides motivation for children to make these decisions in their own lives as well. If children constantly watch their parents drink sugary sodas, they will constantly desire to have sugary sodas as well. If children watch their parents increase their daily water intake it is likely that children will also make the same decision in their own lives too.

Simply removing unhealthy foods from schools does not change the eating habits of students. Students must be taught the benefits of eating healthy and working out regularly at school and at home. It is not enough for a message to only be given in one place. Conflicting messages given to children about foods and health confuses children. As a result, children need to be equipped with information to make positive health decisions in every situation. Children and families need to be empowered and given the confidence that they can make positive health decisions even in the midst of having unhealthy choices available to them.

This recent study shows that school efforts alone to curb obesity are not enough and will not be successful on their own. Instead, positive health decisions need to be encouraged in both the schools and the homes of children. Concerned parents can utilize the information from this study and take action immediately. Parents have a huge impact on the lives of their children and parents can work to try to find methods to help their children make more positive health decisions. Here are 3 ways to get started today:

1. Start somewhere. Being a parent is hard work and it can be difficult to pour your energy into a new task. However, your health and your child’s is extremely important. Try to make an added effort to make even small changes to your daily eating habits. Try out some new healthy snacks as a family, start a new family event of making healthy meals together, or start a weekly physical activity that you can enjoy together. Through incorporating healthy habits and behaviors into your families daily life you will make your family healthier with often times little resistance.

2. Be the change that you want to see in your child. Children learn a lot from their parents and you can provide your child with a shining health conscious example for them to follow.

3. Don’t get stuck in the past. It can be easy to over analyze experiences and past decisions. Leave the past in the past. No parent is perfect and there are always things that we could have done better. Make a decision to start fresh today and to make every effort to make you, your child, and your family healthy now. Don’t get stuck by blaming yourself or others. Forgive yourself and move forward! You can make a big impact on your families life and future starting today!

References

MyHealthNewsDaily. (2012). Kids’ weight gains not due to junk food at schools. Http://www.foxnews.com