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Impact Report

For plan Youth Development (McKinley County)
Date November 3, 2010, 10:28 pm
For Objective Long-term Show long-term objectives
Impact Report Youth Nutrition Childhood overweight and obesity are increasing, and the status of our children’s health is declining. There is little doubt that the majority of children eat considerably more calories than required to maintain their ideal weight. To combat this problem home economist, nutrition educators, school staff and other agencies have teamed up to provide instruction on nutrition for health maintenance and disease prevention. KidsCAN programs teach children healthy habits such as: limiting fried foods (fast food/supersize it), sugar and other unhealthy products, participating in regular physical activities, and to choose healthy snack foods such as; fruit, vegetables and yogurt. The children are provided with hand on activities (preparing healthy snacks, learning about MyPyramid, participate in nutrition games, etc.) and regular physical activities and healthy eating practices that will help decrease their risk for chronic diseases and live healthier and longer lives. All of the programs mentioned above include the New Mexico Performance Standards and Benchmarks adopted August 1996 as part of 6NMAC3.2. This year about 2,764 children and their teachers from 16 McKinley County schools and Bureau of Indian Education completed 4 lessons in one or more nutrition programs. Each child received special certificates for each program completed (Eat Smart, Play Hard, Team Nutrition, or Cooking With Kids. One time lessons were also provided for 452 youth in the 2009-2010 school years at the Zuni Head Start program. Evaluation was given to students third-eighth grades and sent to ICAN Specialist for review and reporting purposes. Teachers and parents noted that students were more aware of the foods they are eating, preparing healthy snacks, and are in fact changing their eating habits to include more fruits and vegetables. With proper training on nutrition, serving sizes, exercise, avoiding fried foods and sugar overweight children are more likely to lose weight and suffer less from negative self image, depression, and eating disorders.