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The wrong message: Obesity in Schools Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prevalence of overweight children has doubled during the past twenty years. Further research by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, state that 17.1% of children between the ages 2 to 19 are overweight. Obesity among children is on the rise. School-aged children spend approximately thirty hours a week in school. Hence the questions arise, how are schools addressing the growing problem of obesity? Are schools sending the wrong message? There's an ever growing contradiction among schools when it comes to childhood obesity. It is widely known that sugary, empty calorie foods contribute to weight gain as does a lack of exercise. Schools across the country have regulations in place to limit sugary drinks and foods consumed by children during school hours. Nationwide, hundreds of schools have become one hundred percent sugar free zones, allowing only sugar-free treats, drinks, and healthy foods onto campus. Yet today, schools serve a slew of pre-packaged heat and serve meals filled with preservatives and high calories all in the name of convenience and cost. Gone are the days of healthy cooking in schools. School kitchens have become nothing more than glorified microwaves and heating ovens. What message is this sending to American youth? Students cannot purchase a soft drink on school grounds, but they can eat a micro waved breaded sandwich and fat laden potato rounds from the school cafeteria. How does this help the growing obesity problem? Increasingly physical education programs are becoming more unstructured or completely non-existent within schools. Often PE classes become a free for all; just throw out the balls and let kids play. To exacerbate the problem children are not getting daily structured physical education time; many only have PE two to three hours per week. In addition to lackadaisical physical education programs, schools are fighting against increasing testing pressures. With the pressure to meet state testing standards, schools are limiting recess time or squelching it completely to increase academic seat time. Students have less and less time to run around, exercise, and burn calories in effort to meet testing demands. Schools acknowledge the obesity problem. It is difficult problem to ignore, when there are hundreds of overweight kids are shuffling around campus too big to fit in conventional desks. Or worse yet huffing and puffing from being out of breath just from walking to their next class. Schools are sending the wrong message by taking away sugary foods, but serving poor nutritional meals and limiting desperately needed physical education programs.

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