ADOLESCENT OBESITY: SIGNIFICANT OF
IMPROVING SCHOOL NUTRITION STANDARD FOR
OUR CHILDREN
BY OMOLARA OBATOLA MPH STUDENT
WALDEN UNIVERISTY
PUBH 6165-5
INSTRUCTOR: Dr. PATRICK TSCHIDA
SUMMER QUARTER, 2011
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 BY the end this presentation, the reader will be able to
 To understand define obesity
 Understand the significant of adolescent obesity
 What are the impact of obesity in adolescent
 What are the preventive methods
 How can the school food nutrition program can eliminate adolescent
obesity
 How the parent, and the school community can eliminate the barriers
to healthy good nutrition.
WHAT IS OBESITY
 Obesity is an abnormal accumulation of body fat. In clinical terms, it is
defined as an ingestion of more calories than what the body can use
over a period of time that become accumulated and result in body fat.
 Wieland et al support this definition of obesity saying “obesity is
generally defined as the abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat in
the adipose tissue to the extent that health may be impaired”
(Wieland et al, 2004).
WHAT IS OBESITY CONT’D
 The authors also made a point in which I support; they said that it is
not easy to determine when the level of adipose tissue become too
risky for health (Wieland et al, 2004).
 Whenever obesity is mentioned, overweight and body index mass is
always mentioned as well. Although obesity and overweight are
closely related in terms of what they means, but they are define
differently, while obesity is an accumulation of body fat, “overweight is
generally defined as weight that exceeds the threshold of a criterion
standard or reference value” (Kuczmarski et al, 2000).
WHAT IS OBESITY CONT’D
 That is a food for thought for all health care providers and public
health profession as a whole. Obesity is a society problem, therefore it
is our problem too as public health professionals.
 We need to implement tools that will be easy to use so that we can all
work together to eradicate this obesity issue
PREVALENCE OF ADOLESCENT OBESITY
Eating this
everyday
equals
This
 Although obesity and overweight is a concern for the whole
population but it is more rampant among the adolescent
PREVALENCE OF ADOLESCENT OBESITY CONT’D
 The prevalence of adolescent is very high in our population today, and if
not treated properly it will extend to adulthood which might lead to many
disease and possibly death.
 Tsiros et al, mentioned that “adolescence is a vulnerable period for the
development of obesity, and adolescent weight tracks strongly into
adulthood” (Tsiros et al, 2008).
 The sole purpose of public health is to prevent diseases and to educate
the public to live healthy, and because of the high prevalence, it is public
health concern.
 The prevalence of adolescence obesity is high to the extent that, it was
the main focus for the first lady of United State of America Mrs. Michelle
Obama to embark on first by creating a program to reduce or possibly
eradicate the prevalence of adolescent obesity.
FACTORS THAT IMPACT ADOLESCENT OBESITY
 Factors that impact adolescent obesity include behavioral,
Psychological, and environmental factors.
 Adolescent obesity if not well treated when young and it extend to
adulthood, it can lead to “petentially life-threatening complications
including diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, asthma, and arthritis
(Mokdad et al, 2003), and substantial reductions in life (Fontaine et al,
2003).
 The objective of public health is to implement program that will
educate the public to live an healthy life, therefore educating
adolescent about obesity is part of the program as well.
BEHAVIORAL IMPACT
 When most young people understand that they are obese, they start
to manifest certain behaviors like spending more hours watching
television, they will become conscious of their weight especially
among friends by being very uncomfortable, and their self-esteem will
begin to decrease.
 Sedentary behaviors because they are encouraged around the world
by modern lifestyles; as a result, many adolescent are surrounded with
overeating, especially eating unhealthy and fatty foods.
 They are not encourage to eat healthy foods because they find it
difficult to cook, and probably have learn such behavior from their
parent.
 Most parents that are tired after working long hours, therefore they
will rather buy fast food home to their children, and this become an
habit that lead to obesity in themselves and their children.
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT
 Adolescent who are affected with obesity manifest depression,
sadness, anger, and overeating.
 Depression is a very typical sign that usually first manifest when an
adolescent realize that he or she is obese. Some of the obese
adolescent manifest this sign because that is the only way they think
they can show how unhappy they are with their state of health rather
than expressing sadness.
 They become dissatisfy with their body and just continue the habit of
overeating and sometimes binge eating.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
 Environmental manifestation of adolescent obesity includes
occupation, family status, living status, and association.
 The environment that one grow up in usually determine one’s way of
life. For instance a child that grow up in family that don’t cook healthy
food, and depend on take out order from fast food restaurant, have a
high percentage of growing to live like that unless he or she learn to
change the habit to an healthy one.
 The school food environment also is known to impact adolescent
obesity also because it is the believe that “schools had been unfairly
targeted as the cause of adolescent obesity” (Nollen et. al., 2007).
SCHOOL NUTRITION STANDARD AS AN
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
 According to CDC, “given the number of hours children spend at
school, the school environment can have a significant influence on
children's diets” (CDC, 2009).
 It has also been proven through studies that “greater access to less
nutritious foods and beverages at school is associated with an
increased intake of total calories, soft drinks, total fat, and saturated
fat; an increased body mass index; and a decreased intake of fruits,
vegetables, milk, and key vitamins and minerals” (CDC, 2009).
 Findings of CDC's 2008 School Health Profiles Survey (Profiles), shows
that fewer secondary schools in the United States sold less nutritious
foods and beverages in vending machines, school stores, canteens, and
snack bars in 2008 than in 2006 (CDC, 2009).
SCHOOL NUTRITION STANDARD AS AN
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT CONT’D
 Many schools lack nutritional standard because “foods and beverages
offered or sold in schools outside of U.S. Department of Agriculture
school meal programs are not subject to federal nutrition standards (1)
and generally are of lower nutritional quality than foods and beverages
served in the meal programs” (CDC, 2009).
PREVENTIVE METHODS
 There are many ways to prevent adolescent obesity which include
surgical procedure, pharmacotherapy, dietary intervention, and
increasing physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviors,
combined lifestyle approaches and psychological intervention to
achieve behavior change.
 The most important preventive method I will focus on is how to
improve school nutrition and how it can be implemented.
 To improve this , there has to be cooperation between parent and
school community in other to get positive result
HOW TO IMPROVE SCHOOL
NUTRITION STANDARD
 Although there has been program and education to improve
nutritional program in school, but it needs to be increased, and well
implemented too.
 Center for Disease Control and Prevention mentioned that “a key
policy solution includes establishing strong nutrition standards for
competitive foods and beverages that restrict availability of low nutrient, energy-dense foods” (CDC, 2009).
 They went further to advice that “if competitive foods are available
during the school day, they should consist primarily of fruits,
vegetables, whole grains, and nonfat and low-fat milk products, as
recommended by the Institute of Medicine” (CDC, 2009).
HOW TO IMPROVE SCHOOL
NUTRITION STANDARD CONT’D
 The report from the United State General Accounting office (GAO),
states that “students may need more exposure to nutrition education
to effect positive changes in their behavior, and most students have to
foods of little nutritional value, such as soft drinks and candy, at
school” (GAO, 2003).
 I agree with this statement because with education, the student can
learn the purpose of eating is to quench hunger, and it is very
important to eat healthy food to help them grow healthy rather than
obese.
LIMITATIONS IN IMPROVING SCHOOL
NUTIRON STANDARD
 Despite every effort to improve school nutrition standard to encourage
healthy eating habit, there are barriers to the program which can
affect the program from being implemented properly in schools.
 Some of the barrier are limited time to teach student nutrition class
because the school curriculum does not permit more classes to be
added, and more time are spent on meeting the academicals standard.
 GAO also noted that “officials noted that overcoming barriers required
strong and persevering leadership” (GAO, 2003).
 I believe to strongly implement this program effectively, the
cooperative effort of the parent and the school community is needed.
LIMITATIONS IN IMPROVING SCHOOL
NUTIRON STANDARD CONT’D
 Many teachers from different schools said that when healthier foods with
lower fat content is introduce by the school food authorities, there is risk
that students will not like the changes in the menu, and it result in student
purchasing less from school food.
 Most of the “school food authorities operate their programs on a breakeven financial basis, and student meal payments make up a large part of
their revenue, a decrease in meals purchased can throw their budget out
of balance” (GAO, 2003).
 Another barrier is the fact that many school principals and organizations
depend on the money receive from vending machines and sales of other
food, and beverages that may be of limited nutritional value because the
funds are often used to pay for special activities or items not covered in
the school’s budget (GAO, 2003).
 In addition, “school food authority officials told us that to help manage
their budgets, they have chosen to sell less healthful items in the cafeteria,
in competition with the USDA reimbursable meals” (GAO, 2003).
REFERNCES
 Center for Disease control and Prevention (CDC). (2009) Promoting Healthier Foods
and Beverages In U.S. Schools. Retrieved June 22, 2011, from
http://www.cdc.gov/Features/SchoolNutrition/.
 Center for Disease control and Prevention (CDC). (2009). Availability of Less
Nutritious Snack Foods and Beverages in Secondary Schools ---Selected States, 2002-2008. Retrieved June 22, 2001, from
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm58e1005a1.htm?s_cid=mm58e
1005a1_e.
 Fontaine K.R, Redden D.T, Wang C., Westfall A.O, and Allison D.B (2003). Years of life
lost due to obesity . Journal of American Medical Association, vol 289 No. 2 pg 187193.
 Kuczmarski, Robert J and Flegal, Katherine M (2000). Criteria for definition of
overweight in transition: background and recommendations for the United States.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 72, No. 5, 1074-1081.
 Mokdad A.H, Ford E.S, Bowman B.A et al. (2003). Prevalence of obesity, and obesityrelated health risk factors, 2001. Journal of American Medical Association, vol 289
No.1 pg 76-79.
REFERENCES CONT’D
 Nollen N.L, Befort C.A, Snow P., Daley C.M, Ellerbeck E.F, and Ahluwalia
J.S,(2007). The school food environment and adolescent obesity:
qualitative insights from high school pricinpals and food service
personnel. International Journal of Behavior, Nutrition and Physical
Act, 4-18.
 Tsiros, Margarita D., Sinn, Natalie, Coates, Alison M., Howe Peter R.C.,
and Buckley, Jonathan D. (2008). Treatment of adolescent overweight
and obesity. European Journal of Pediatrics, 167: 9-16.
 United States General Accounting Office (GAO). (2003, ). School
Lunch: Efforts Needed to Improve Nutrition and Encourage Healthy
Eating. Retrieved June 22, 2001, from
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03506.pdf.
 Wieland Kiess, Marcus Claude, and Wabitsch, Martin (2004). Obesity in
Childhood and Adolescence. Karger Publishers Vol 9 pg 1.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS
TOPIC VISIT THE FOLLOWING
WEBSITE
 http://www.cdc.gov/Features/SchoolNutrition/
 http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm58e1005a1.htm?
s_cid=mm58e1005a1_e
 http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2007/Nutrition-Standards-for-Foods-inSchools-Leading-the-Way-toward-Healthier-Youth.aspx
 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03506.pdf