The Findings of My Interviews...

For my research project I've been interviewing people about what goes on in our school's breakfast and lunches, and so far I've talked to our Health teachers, our principal, our lunch ladies and Chef Dan. Through these interviews I've discovered the why's of the Nutrition in Branford High School.



The first interview I conducted was with Mr. Panagulias. I asked him what say he has in the food served here. He said that he has no control, but he cautiously said, "the caf staff works very hard, what is served and how it's served the state has control over. " He would like to see more fresh food and maybe a salad bar or a cart with interesting foods.



Then I talked with Mr. Tracey, the Health teacher for Freshman and Sophmores. I asked him what he taught in the two years he had these kids and he said that he teached about Nutrition; the principals of nutrition and food pyramid in about 6-8 weeks. When asked about what changes he'd like to see he said he hates that we serve pizza and french fries. He also said that the lines are way too long for a 25 minute period.



After this I went to the kitchen where the food is prepared and talked with Sandi. Sandi is in charge of putting together the lunch menu. The menu is put together based on the Healthy Eating Initiative Laws in CT. There are guidlines that have to be followed. She then directed me to Chef Dan for further questions.



Chef Dan and I talked for a long time about what goes on in the kitchen. There are five components that Dan puts into the meals; Protein, Milk, Grain, Veggies, Fruit. He also said that a way that he regulates the meals is by portion sizes; the meals have 850 calories and all of the meals have less than 30% of the calories are derived from fat. When asked about the fries and pizza he said that they keep it healthy by using wheat breads and instead of using the frialators they bake them instead; this way there is no saturated fats. The baking is done here but most of the food that comes in is frozen except for produce. A problem that he says is occuring is how many students are in each lunch wave and trying to serve them all with the space provided. At solution we could come up with is a third lunch wave, this would eliminate the long lines and kids could buy the lunch and still get to sit down and eat it.

These interviews have helped me to see how everything operates and what restrictions are placed because of the laws in CT, some are bad such as budget which stop us from serving better things because they are more expensive, and then the good things are the 5 components of nutrition. The next step in my progress would be looking up the Healthy Eating Initiative.

Children's Nutrition Act

Some of the research I've been doing has lead me to a few articles. One of the articles I found online stated new rules that school's have to enforce with the reinstated Children's Nutrition Act of 1966. These rules will ensure things such as a certain amount of calcium in meals, replacing white bread with whole wheat or a limit on how much salt can be used is also enforced.

The most interesting ariticle I read was about how fresh the food is at lunch. The article makes great points, for example that frozen foods have much more salt and fat to keep them preserved while in the freezer. This adds extra ingredients that wouldnt be there if it was fresh and isnt good for you either. Another good issue that the article brings up is the amount of carbs that aren't restricted by the child food act, it only restricts fat. So many school lunches serve pastas, breads, and potatoes. Although these foods are good in moderation, serving kids these a lot will add on the pounds. So the question that was raised was how to make a nutritional meal that goes along with the budget.

The Child Food Act works every 5 years, and then Congress looks at how the money was spent. They now see that fruits and vegetables need to be added and want to incorporate the local farmers with schools. When the government works with the schools and other local corporations they can make deals and also help the children.

I still need to find laws of schools from my library, because online gives too broad of search. This and my interviews are next on the list to complete.

How Colleges are doing their job with Obesity...

Recently while researching for my research paper I came across a new rule that an education the levels of obesity to decrease. I've read about Elementary School's, Middle School's, and High School's working to eliminate obesity, but I've never heard about a college, until now. Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, is requiring all students who cross into the obesity range must take a 1 credit gym class.

This is a fascinating concept; grownups are required to do something about their weight in order to graduate. Professor, Dr. Vyonne Hilton disagrees with the BMI requirements, he says that there should be a different approach to what they are trying to accomplish. Some students also argued that their weight has no bearing on their education, their ability to do well so it shouldn't stop them from graduating. So the question is does the University have the right to put a hold on on diplomas because of weight?

Another question I want to address is if we are given the choice on what we eat, and we choose the wrong one, or the less nutritious, than who is at fault, and who has the right to punish us for this? Should parents be at fault for not educating parents, or should it lay in the hands of children? These are things that I will be answering as I discover more cases of nutrition in America.

The picture in the upper right corner is a sad example of obesity in the US. Although it was found on lol101.com, I don't find it particularily funny. This is an interesting point; if we dont take obesity seriously, how will it ever get better?

Thanks to Mr. Miller for emailing me the article!

No more Super Sizing

In the documentary, Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock directly demonstrates for all of America to see the affects of McDonald's on his body. For thirty days he ate only McDonald's for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Through Nutritionists and other Doctors he learns the affects of fast food on the human body. He also went into school's and interviewed many people to find out what they serve in the schools. In one school, for kids who got kicked out of the standard New York public schools, they get served very healthy food that's for the most part cooked solely in the kitchen. It's not thawed, and the food is primarily vegetables. This food is the same cost as the more fatty school foods but the food companies will suffer considerably beca
use the cost to prepare the healthy foods is more than the cost of the fatty. This being said, the companies want to sell whats cheap regardless of how bad it is for you.

The affects of fast food on the human body leads to:
increased headaches
becoming addicted
high cholesterol
fatty liver
depression

I also read an article about the affects of soda in The Hartford Courant about soda. This also connects to Super Size Me because the fast food meals all have soda with them. A 12- ounce soda contains 10 teaspoons of sugar. The amount of calories in a soda are almost a meal alone. If I cut out a soda I could go and have another meal to make up for it. A quick fix to wanting something bubby is seltzer and a juice like OJ or cranberry juice.

Communications of the Internet

I learned a lot about Wikis, Social Networks, Rss Feeds, and Social Bookmarking throught the recent presentations. One of the common similarities of all of the topics was how they give the user control over the information online.

For example; on my blog I learned how to subscribe to another blog using the RSS feeds, and this will show me only the specific news that I subscribed too. For example, I subscribed to the latest on CNN which allows me to only get information that I want, and eliminates sorting through news, and RSS feeds make the news extremely accessable to locate.

Social Networking allows a person to create a profile to share personal and proffesional information. This allows a person to control what goes onto their profile, and who they're friends are. When trying to find a job you can post your resume and get recognition. I use Social Networking to Facebook, and I have over 1,000 pictures tagged and 46 albums and over 1,000 friends. This way I can talk to my friends, share, pictures and information.

Social Bookmarking is similar to bookmarking on your own computer, the difference with social bookmarking is that you can save your to a page online, that is visible for others to see. For example, Digg is a site where you can search and locate articles. I don't use Social Bookmarking in my own life, I don't have the time to keep up a page and search for people who have common interests.

Wiki's are really cool, if I do say so myself. I learned that a wiki allows for multiple people to edit a document at the same time, without email. It immediately updates itself when you press save. A really neat site we showed in our presentation was common craft , it showed how a wiki can be used.

All of these techniques can be used to share and obtain information. To view presentations on these topics click this link.

Loopholes in Nutrition

Although nutrition is important and eating healthy foods is the key to improving your diet, there are some untold loopholes. On a blog I read online called Daily Spark a post was focusing on nutritional bars can cause unsuspected cavaties. You think while eating a Power Bar or Zone Perfect Bar, that you're doing something good for yourself, and then the next time you go to the dentist you have a cavity.

I did some research on loopholes in Nutrition and found that there are others that I think people should be wary about. A chocolate power bar has 20 grams of sugar, and a chocolate carmel cluster Zone Perfect bar has 14 grams of sugar. Although these are crucial when your recovering for a workout, the gooey bar gets stuck in your teeth and increases chances of cavities.

Another scary thing I came across in my readings were how misleading some food labels are. Such as an article from the Washington Post about Poptarts with a "made with real fruit" label on it, when it's really only made with three small pieces of fruit, the rest being sugar and chemicals. Thankfully I understand that a Poptart isn't what the food pyramid had in mind when it said you needed five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.
But it's clear that without reading the label, a mom would never know what she was feeding her 8 year old. Hopefully most mother's would't fall for all the propaganda.

The FDA thankfully is lowering the criteria for something "made with fruit" or "healthy" because the healthy products usually have high levels of sodium which isn't good in large doses. These changes in the system are important to keep the level of obesity down also. It stresses how important reading the serving sizes and labels are when deciding what to buy and what's healthy or not.

Who I Follow and What I've Changed..

I subscribed to these blog;

School Lunch Talk
Daily Spark
A Sizable Apple
CNN
AOL
and the blogs of my classmates.

School Lunch Talk is a great blog that I started to read as research for my paper. It talks about the loopholes in School's and also about what we're doing to make sure Nutrition is taken more into account. The Healthy Food for Healthy Schools Act is one of the steps into bettering what's served in the schools. School Lunch Talk updates the blog almost weekly, and talks about other flaws in the lunches. I couldn't believe how close this blog fell in with my topic!

Also the Daily Spark is another blog I've subscribed to. It actually was the source for my newest blog post when I read a post about how nutrition bars are supposed to be good for you but they can come with unsuspecting suprises like cavities because of the high levels of sugar. I liked this blog because it's very easy to read and the spread is not crowded. The Spark writer's choose topics that people can relate to, so I enjoy learning new things from reading!

A Sizable Apple is another blog I read, the first post I read was about how to encourage 14-19 year olds ( predominately high schoolers) how to excericize. In the post it told how one school chose pole dancing, I laughed out loud! I needed to read on, then I continued to search for more posts with this sort of hook to them. I also liked tips on fitness, because with nutrition you need to always have some sort of excercize. Although this didn't help me as much in my research paper I still liked to read the blog.

I've changed/altered my blog by going into the design template and changing some of the layout, such as where the extras were and what order they are in. I also found a neat tool that I use to easily link the blogs I subscribed to on Google reader onto my blog roll. This was a great help! I wanted the blogs I subscribe to to be at the top, so that my readers have easy access to them. Also I added writing below my title just to try out all the extras. I explored the settings, layout and monetinize sections to become more familiar with everything in the blog.

I also wanted to change the design of my blog, the blue template I had was very colorful, but it took away from the writing. Now the color of the back round is white which allows the reader to focus more on the post instead of the "decorations".