Prometheus 6

Nutrition class not curbing junk-food craving
Child obesity up despite US push on healthy eating
By Martha Mendoza, Associated Press  |  July 5, 2007

PANORAMA CITY, Calif. -- The federal government will spend more than $1 billion this year on nutrition education -- fresh carrot and celery snacks, videos of dancing fruit, hundreds of hours of lively lessons about how great you will feel if you eat well.

But an Associated Press review of scientific studies examining 57 such programs found mostly failure. Just four showed any real success in changing the way children eat -- or any promise as weapons against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity.

"Any person looking at the published literature about these programs would have to conclude that they are generally not working," said Dr. Tom Baranowski, a pediatrics professor at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine who studies behavioral nutrition.

The results have been disappointing :

Last year a major federal pilot program offering free fruits and vegetables to school children showed fifth-graders became less willing to eat them than they had been at the start. Apparently they didn't like the taste.

In Pennsylvania, researchers went so far as to give prizes to school children who ate fruits and vegetables. That worked while the prizes were offered, but when the researchers came back seven months later, the students had reverted to their original eating habits: soda and chips.