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REPORTS: CHILE |
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Junk
Food, TV, Sedentary Lifestyle -
Overweight Kids
Marķa
Cecilia Espinoza
SANTIAGO, (IPS) - Growing
consumption of fast food and junk
food, long hours in front of the TV
set, and a sedentary lifestyle have
led to an increase in obesity among
schoolchildren in Chile.
The problem is seen at all
socioeconomic levels and in all
regions of the country, according to a
study carried out with support from
the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The researchers found no significant
differences in children's eating
habits between regions, or between
urban and rural areas, local FAO
consultant Sonia Olivares told IPS.
When the study was launched, the
researchers expected to find
differences in the diets of children
arising from climatic, geographic and
cultural differences in this long,
narrow Southern Cone country.
''Northern Chile is very different
from the south, but unfortunately the
country is homogeneous in that aspect
(dietary habits). Ninety-nine percent
of children watch TV, snack bars are
exactly the same in all schools, and
the major fast food and junk food
chains are everywhere,'' said Olivares.
''The only difference found was that
children in the north drank less fruit
juice,'' she added.
The researchers found extremely low
levels of consumption of vegetables,
fruit and milk. They also noted that
consumption of dairy products drops as
children grow, especially among girls,
and that children eat 70 percent more
bread than the recommended daily
portion.
The study was conducted in 10 schools
in northern, central and southern
Chile by FAO, the Education Ministry,
and the University of Chile Institute
of Nutrition and Food Technology (INTA).
Local authorities will now begin to
implement, with backing from FAO, a
programme for training primary school
teachers to include education on good
dietary habits in their lesson plans,
starting in third grade.
The educators will work with teaching
materials that were presented in an
Aug. 21 workshop held to evaluate the
''Education on Nutrition in Basic
Education'' project, at the regional
FAO office for Latin America, in
Santiago.
The workshop, which analysed the
results of the study, found that the
proportion of overweight children was
highest among younger children,
although girls tend to gain weight as
they grow.
The rate of malnutrition, which
affected 15.5 percent of 1.2 million
children who had check-ups in the
public health services in 1975, had
dropped to five percent by 1993.
On the other hand, the proportion of
overweight schoolchildren doubled in
the first grade, from 6.5 to 13.1
percent among boys, and from 7.7 to
14.7 percent among girls, between 1987
and 1996.
Based on the study carried out by the
''Education on Nutrition in Basic
Education'' project, the governmental
National Council on School Assistance
and Scholarships (JUNAEB) estimated
that 17.2 percent of first-graders are
overweight.
Olivares described the chips,
crackers, chocolates and other
packaged snacks that children are
eating today instead of fruit,
sandwiches and other healthy foods as
a ''nightmare,'' because they add
hundreds of extra empty calories to
the diets of today's children.
''If kids eat these kinds of snacks,
they have already gotten all of the
calories they need for that day,
because the snacks are extremely high
in calories,'' said the expert.
In general, the children who regularly
consume junk food also lead sedentary
lives, watching an average of three
hours of TV a day, especially on
weekends -- one of the reasons that
there are so many overweight
pre-adolescents in Chile today.
According to Dr. Fernando Vio, the
director of INTA and the national
coordinator of the project, one of the
deeper underlying causes of the
problem lies in Chile's economic
growth in the 1990s.
''A large part of the family income
goes towards food, but it goes towards
an inadequate diet, rich in sugar and
fats. Purchases of TV sets and cars
also increased,'' he said.
Since then, there has been an
explosive increase in obesity,
associated with a ''sedentary
lifestyle and unhealthy eating
habits,'' said Vio.
In 1997, local authorities began to
adopt policies aimed at counteracting
that tendency, through JUNAEB's
educational and consciousness-raising
programmes on nutrition, for example.
Through the FAO-sponsored initiative,
educational packets of seven textbooks
and a CD-ROM will be distributed to
public and private schools around the
country, to help primary school
teachers begin to tackle the question
of dietary habits and lifestyle.
''Our generation already has (bad)
eating habits, it's a lost generation.
The task now is to focus on
preschoolers and schoolchildren in the
country's 11,000 primary and middle
schools, and among the 140,000
teachers,'' said Vio.
FAO representative in Chile
Constantino Tapias agreed that
solutions must be sought where the
problem starts.
''School has the basic mission of
teaching children, and the role of
primary and middle school education is
essential to the task of teaching
healthy dietary habits and
nutrition,'' he said.
Dr. Francisco Espejo, the director of
JUNAEB, pointed out that it was
necessary to also bear in mind that 10
percent of schoolchildren in Chile are
dependent on the meals provided by
JUNAEB to needy children in the
country's schools.
In its efforts to reach out to
children, the FAO-sponsored project
emphasises the need to grow tall and
strong and to look good, since
messages on the health benefits of
good eating habits ''don't reach
children,'' said Olivares.
The workshop held to evaluate the
results of the study found a
significant increase in children's
knowledge about nutrition, as well as
an increase in consumption of dairy
products, lower consumption of bread,
and a drop in the proportion of
overweight and obese children.
Olivares said junk food is ''the big
enemy, both within and outside of the
schools. In the school snack bars,
children are not provided any
alternatives, and that goes beyond
what education can do.''
The task is ''to create awareness and
encourage children to adopt healthy
eating habits, because children are
generators of change in the home. The
evidence lies in the influence that
kids have on food shopping, in the
supermarket for example,'' she added.
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