I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I can't help it.
Yesterday morning I was flipping through my various RSS feeds and I came across the latest post on the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check blog. It written by Devon Peart, a registered dietitian who also has a Masters in Community Nutrition. In the post Devon applauds Domino's for making a "healthy" pizza to offer kids as part of their school pizza days. Moreover she quite literally challenges Canadian pizza producers to make a Health Check approved pizza to serve to kids in schools for what Devon calls,
"a welcome change from routine for many school children"And she ends the post with, "Let's hope they take up the challenge!"
So I guess you should forget about the fact that childhood obesity rates are still rising and that kids as young as 6 are now developing type 2 diabetes. Forget too that every school food reform policy ever written feels school pizza days are anathema to healthy school food. You'd better also forget about the fact that our societal shift from actually cooking to the normalization of fast and restaurant food is stoking the rise in obesity and chronic disease and that food dollars spent outside the home have risen from the low 30s to nearing 60% since the 1970s. Not to mention that you should forget about the fact that the Heart and Stroke Foundation, as a for-health organization, should be bending over backwards to encourage home cooking, discourage processed foods, and all in all help to protect our children from the purveyors of fast food.
Why should you forget all of those things?
Because if you don't forget them how else are you to explain that here we have a registered dietitian with a Masters in Community Nutrition, supporting school pizza days as, "welcome changes from routine", explicitly inviting Canadian pizza makers to apply for a Heart and Stroke Foundation Health Check which the pizza folk would then use to help to dupe school children into thinking that store bought pizza is a healthy, good for them, Heart and Stroke Foundation approved, at least weekly meal.
Mind boggling, horrifying, and heartbreaking.
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Sigh. I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of our dysfunction in providing healthy nutrition for our children.
ReplyDeleteWhat will we do? I try to encourage my members to "be the change they want to see in the world" by creating healthy meals for themselves and their families.
Kids do as we DO, not as we SAY so it has to start with us - the parents and caregivers.
Thanks.
Horrifying indeed!
ReplyDeleteI am a RD and I work on several First Nation communities and this week our diabetes clinic focused on how to make heart healthy pizza. Crust was from scratch using Fleischmann's pizza yeast which makes a super soft and tasty dough. The pizza sauce base was salt free tomato paste & herbs, and toppings emphasized vegetables, lean meats (we used thin sliced ham and turkey) and as little cheese as we could.
We had a diverse group including several people with intellectual disabilities and two blind women. We made enough for lunch for ourselves, talked about how to decrease the fat and salt in the foods we love and everyone made a full sized, 12 inch pizza to take home and feed their family.
Making your own pizza and learning how to feed your family for less money and with increased nutrition? Now that's empowerment and rewarding for clients! That is what dietitians need to be endorsing.
We don't need Heart and Stroke and Dominos Pizza telling us to buy commercially prepared "healthy" food. We need to learn the skills to make healthy foods for ourselves!
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DeleteWell there are a number of possibilities. Perhaps the educational institution attended by the blog writer is not properly educating its students. Perhaps the blog-writer possesses credentials but did not do particularly well in certain areas of his/her education. Perhaps the blog-writer has not done enough research into the failings of the health check or is simply unaware of them. Perhaps the blog-writer is over-emphasizing certain benefits to the pizza and under-emphasizing some of the negatives to end in an overzealous conclusion. Come to think of it, the possibilities are almost endless. "Epic" fail indeed.
ReplyDeleteMichelle gave me an idea.
ReplyDeleteWhat if instead of pizza days in school, they were to have one day a month dedicated to a healthy meal? And teach the kids how to cook it themselves? I mean, obviously for the youngest classes this would be too dangerous, but for them I would say education about the subject is more important anyway. For the seventh and eighth grade classes, they could have them work in groups to actually cook their own healthy pizzas or whatever the meal of the day was, and then they could serve it to the rest of the school. I remember the older classes in my school making hot chocolate for us and baking cookies in the winter time when I was a kid, so I don't see why this would be a problem so long as it was allergen free, healthy food instead.
Instead of bringing in 5 dollars or whatever for your slices, you would have people bring in money for ingredients to go towards it.
Just an idea. It's a long shot though, and would be far into the future of our current pizza/hotdog/hamburger day obsessed schools the way they are now. What with the cutting out P.E. and all.
RE: Cuddles suggestion: that sounds remarkably similar to what we called "Home Ec" class when I was in junior high. It was a good idea then and it's still a great idea now. (Though in those days I recall only 3 boys took the class - the rest took "shop"). Brenda
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the Heart Check on the Pizza Hut website I knew the Heart and Stroke Foundation was an organization I would never support.
ReplyDeleteThis latest post doesn't surprise me in the least.
I agree with Louise, H&S can endorse or suggest anything they want but education starts at home and WE have to ensure we're giving kids the tools they need to make the right choices.
My niece's school has pizza day once a month. She no longer participates. She doesn't like the pizza. I try to minimize the amount of processed foods in the house and her palate is changing. She prefers fresh foods to junk now and only drinks water.
Anonymous, you are a good aunt and your niece is fortunate to have your guidance. The young are dependant upon good nutrition for the strength in their bones and teeth, and the energy to their bodies and these lessons can only come from their guardians. I find Walter Last, a retired Australian naturopath, who shares his studies freely to those who seek out his site, a very informed source of inspiration and knowledge.
DeleteI am particularly impressed that your niece is learning that water is for more than bathing and flushing. Over my years as a teacher, I came to see fewer and fewer students bend over a water fountain rather than reaching for the sugar bottles on their desks. The dehydration showing on the palms of the hands of the sugar children was becoming akin to that seen in the elderly.
Long-time reader, first-time commenter.
ReplyDeleteI am a dietitian working in acute care with a stroke population.
I'm dismayed by this though I haven't read the original article, which I will do after posting my comment.
Excellent suggestions from Michelle & Cuddles. Here's a third...perhaps the Heart & Stroke Foundation could work with other organizations or volunteers to create and support school garden programs. And now I'm not speaking as a dietitian but simply someone who has learned healthy eating really does begin in the garden.
This is one time where I disagree; not with the absurdity of many of the things that the Heart and Stroke Foundation does, or the points that you provided, you can't really disagree with facts. However from my perspective as someone who spends a lot of time in schools, school lunches are often times the only days that some children get a 'proper meal' for lack of a better term, and few kids bring actually healthy or homemade food to school anyway. Where I am and have been, it is mostly bags of chips, giant muffins, fruit snacks and the like.
ReplyDeleteI agree that days like this should be limited, but if a health checked pizza were actually healthy that would be a big move in the right direction. In this instance the problem is the health check requirements, and that it is more a marketing tool for pizza in this instance are the negatives.
If school lunch days start serving healthier versions and children learn that there may be a big difference in nutrition between store bought items and how to tell the difference and the importance of these differences that is a good thing in my books, and I don't believe that I am misguided in this instance.
Yikes. Since I was a young child, certain commercial pizzas have been cause for certain digestive distress. Most of them are, now. Only a local pizzeria with THIN crust, lots of veggies, and just enough cheese to hold it all together (like Michelle's, sans meat) works for me. School food of this nature would have filled me with dismay- and the hope that the teachers would be kind when I had to dash to the restroom.
ReplyDeleteGiving it the seal of approval is even worse. Ill-informed teachers will stand over the kids and say,"eat it! It's good for you!" Then they'll wonder why the kids complain of stomachaches and are lethargic and grumpy all afternoon.
It's really unfortunate that these kinds of foods (i.e., "healthy" pizza) blur the lines between healthy and unhealthy. People know that pizza is unhealthy and know that, say, whole grain is healthy. But slapping whole grain crust on a pizza, for example, only makes the food sound healthier. "Healthy" pizza options I've seen in the past still had just as much salt, fat, and calories. The addition of healthy ingredients to something that is still ultimately unhealthy just confuses people more by masking an unhealthy food.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's much validity to the argument that some additional healthy ingredients are at least better than status quo, because of the potential harm that is caused by confusing people into eating less healthy in the long run.
It's a real problem isn't it? I live in the UK where children are fed 'chicken' nuggets and potato faces at school - it's a disgrace. At the same time, we have a regular pizza at home. My toddler and I have real fun making the dough from scratch with organic flour and fabulous olive oil - we have great fun experimenting with toppings and we all love digging in to the crusty, tasty result. My son doesn't think that pizza is fast food, or that it's bad for you - he just knows that he likes making it and eating it. How do we reconcile eating 'good' pizza and 'bad' pizza??
ReplyDeleteThe person who noted that children often bring terrible lunches to school is absolutely right. This person clearly has been, or is, "on the ground" and knows how bad it can be. Many, many parents pack horrible food, pre-wrapped and convenient, for the children.
ReplyDeleteSuggesting that these parents should get organized to make whole-grain, salt-free, low-fat lunches with lots of vegetables and fruits is like asking the average person to run a marathon this afternoon. It just won't happen.
Schools do not have time to make healthy lunches on-site, and that's not their job, anyway.
Pizza days at school are ubiquitous these days. For many kids, it's already a step up from the cheesies, pop and chocolate they already get for lunch. A healthier choice in the pizza would be a good thing all round, and a move towards healthier children.
I have become weary of the medical professions and the foundations that rely upon public and government dollars yet continue to spiel out the same ‘educated’ mess that they refuse to see that does not work. To them, one transitory success is greater than the massive failures that pass under their tutelage. These indoctrinated, trained medical professions are incapable of seeing the failure of what they have been taught. It does not give one faith to seek medical attention from a medical practitioner, doctor, nurse or nutritionist, who is over weight and not in any range of good health? It would be akin to visiting a blind optometrist in search of spectacles. One doesn’t need to have a nutritionist’s degree to see the kinds of high sugar (carb) foods endorsed by the Heart & Stroke Foundation or the professed preferences of nutritionists to know the myopic ways of those organisations.
ReplyDeleteIt is rare to see a doctor or a professional nutritionist that is not overweight and out of condition. The number of nutritionists I have met that smoke, is shocking. In all these medical systems, peer pressure is powerful persuasive. The thought that any kind of bread pizza could be touted as healthy by a clinical nutritionalist is so horribly sad: at first such used to make me laugh at the lunacy, then it made me cry when I came to understand the indoctrination these poor mortals had undergone; and now I just refuse to worry. I do care about the babies, the children and the youth who have little control over what goes into their mouths; and I do care about the mature men and women who should know better, who should be listening to their bodies, who should research and learn but do not have the time or energy to do. But I do get angry at the lies and deceptions the trusted medical professions advocate to keep their jobs and make their plunder.
The walls are beginning to tumble down as sugars (or if you prefer the made-up name for them, carbohydrates) are being seen as the evil they are. The lectins in wheat not soaked before ground to flour, the denuding hormones in soybeans and the high sugar content of orange juices touted as naturally healthy are coming to be understood for their dangers to health. We must realise that anything goes in advertising, the purpose of which is to sell to make money and profit, not to make health.
More Canadians are looking to healthy animal fats and proteins, low calorie and high vitamin/mineral vegetables, and to seeing berries and occasional nuts (properly soaked to release dangerous lectins) and fruits as healthier deserts. And for those who want an occasional pizza, think about a lettuce or Vietnamese rice sheet wrapped pizza (meat, veg and some spicy sauce without sugars). Yum, once one gets used to natural flavours not manufactured out of chemicals.
Be especially terrified of those who talk the talk of what has made our nation fat and unhealthy over the past forty years. They are to your nutrition what the blind optometrist is to vision. I commend the blogger, a family doc, who dared to raise this important issue.