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Basic human physiology & nutrition in schools

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  • tomteboda
    tomteboda Posts: 2,171 Member
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    esjones12 wrote: »
    tomteboda wrote: »
    esjones12 wrote: »
    tomteboda wrote: »
    3. "Big Ag", by which I can only assume you mean the entire US agricultural and food industries, had precisely no input into the nutrition guidelines. Neither did the schools. The process was purely political.

    You don't think Big Ag is involved in politics? :neutral:

    I haven't seen a school lunch tray in a long time - but I know it didn't match the general nutrition information we were taught in the classroom. I hope that has changed a good deal, but I am afraid to know the truth.

    Perhaps you should go check out meals at your local schools before speaking on things of which you are ignorant.

    I just talked to some mom's at my office - sounds like the school lunches are even worse than before, my hypothesis was correct. So now that I corrected my "ignorance", let me ask you again.

    You really think that Big Ag is not heavily involved in politics?

    Second hand information is unreliable at best. And you should really approach your local district, as local districts make the final decisions.

    I maintain that the current federal school food program was designed by health activists without much input from anyone; not farmers, not food producers of any sort, and certainly without schools.

    If you have specific complaints about specific companies influencing specific rules to the detriment of the public, please do share them.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited September 2016
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    My local school district has meals online. Maybe you could look yours up if interested (and share if they are indeed so horrible). I thought ours were fine given the various goals and that they are aimed at kids, but perhaps you have more rarified expectations.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
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    Christine_72 wrote: »
    I'm still amazed that you guys have change rooms, showers and gyms in your schools. We never even changed clothes before PE lessons, we exercised in the clothes we came to school in.

    We exercised in our school clothes in Elementary school. In middle school and high school, we had lockers, showers and PE clothes. Elementary school PE was just called "recess" and you were allowed to play pretty much whatever game you wanted; middle school was more organized/regimented - you had coaches, they taught organized sports and administered fitness tests. In high school, I was involved in interscholastic sports year-round (played football, basketball and ran track & field), so that made up my PE requirement. If you were an interscholastic athlete, PE was always 6th period (last class of the day) and practices always ran far beyond school hours into the late afternoon/evening.

    I was never a stellar athlete - actually I was very awkward and uncoordinated in elementary school and got made fun of a lot - but PE was always my favorite class of the day. Even in college I always took at least 1 (sometimes 2) PE classes per semester just to break up the classroom time and add some fun to it.

    I think it's pathetic that some schools have eliminated PE classes, and I think it does a great disservice to the kids in many ways. We're failing our children by not teaching them the importance (and the enjoyment) of physical activity and although I firmly believe that "you can't out-train a bad diet", I think that the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of industrialized countries has a lot to do with the increases in obesity. I'm of the opinion that PE should be one of the last programs cut in schools.
  • tomteboda
    tomteboda Posts: 2,171 Member
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    @rainbowbow Home Economics is an undervalued class (as is shop) these days. Practical skills are taught in both that would stand young adults in good stead.

    I leaned about nutrition formally in elementary school (repeatedly), 9th grade health, and college health. The info stuck well enough that i recall it all these years later, but it didn't prevent me from eating too much food in the interim.

    I don't think educating people about nutrition is ignored; rather that is pretty common for students, not seeing the impact of these decisions on their immediate lives, to tune out when it's presented, or to just decide it isn't important to them to use.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    Christine_72 wrote: »
    I'm still amazed that you guys have change rooms, showers and gyms in your schools. We never even changed clothes before PE lessons, we exercised in the clothes we came to school in.

    We exercised in our school clothes in Elementary school. In middle school and high school, we had lockers, showers and PE clothes. Elementary school PE was just called "recess" and you were allowed to play pretty much whatever game you wanted; middle school was more organized/regimented - you had coaches, they taught organized sports and administered fitness tests. In high school, I was involved in interscholastic sports year-round (played football, basketball and ran track & field), so that made up my PE requirement. If you were an interscholastic athlete, PE was always 6th period (last class of the day) and practices always ran far beyond school hours into the late afternoon/evening.

    I was never a stellar athlete - actually I was very awkward and uncoordinated in elementary school and got made fun of a lot - but PE was always my favorite class of the day. Even in college I always took at least 1 (sometimes 2) PE classes per semester just to break up the classroom time and add some fun to it.

    I think it's pathetic that some schools have eliminated PE classes, and I think it does a great disservice to the kids in many ways. We're failing our children by not teaching them the importance (and the enjoyment) of physical activity and although I firmly believe that "you can't out-train a bad diet", I think that the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of industrialized countries has a lot to do with the increases in obesity. I'm of the opinion that PE should be one of the last programs cut in schools.

    Yep, I'd agree PE should be one of the last things to be cut. I also think it should be made challenging for the kids. Jr high and H.S. kids strolling around a track at the pace of a great grandmother while looking at cell phones isn't PE.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    How do you think PE should be structured? In junior high it was required for us, and basically went through a bunch of units that exposed us to various sports (track, tennis, gymnastics--my favorite, because I did gymnastics as a kid, volleyball, basketball are some I recall). Also, some calisthenics (don't recall if that was a unit or what -- I also know it was a big part of gym in elementary school, which was not every day but a unit or once a week or something, don't really recall). There was also some reading and written work. I hated gym in jr high, because I hated being forced to do sports I was bad at (I liked it when we were doing the things I liked, but over the course of the year that was a minority of the time).

    In high school it was required for 2 years, and you got to choose a sport. I liked it then but quit as soon as I could since I was much more concerned about getting in the classes I needed to look good to the right colleges. The problem was I just did the things I knew I enjoyed. My sister had a scheduling conflict and ended up taking weight training because nothing else at the time she wanted was remotely something she could stand. She had no expectations for weight training and was the only girl in the class (this was the '80s, for what it's worth), and really enjoyed it and has used what she learned often since then. I wish I'd taken it back then.

    I like the unit concept to expose people to things, but I'd try to make it more educational and definitely include stuff about why cardio, why strength training and, of course, exposure to weights along with different cardio activities or sports. (I also have a personal bias toward less team sport stuff, which is what I really hated.)

    On the home ec stuff, I don't think we had it in high school, but maybe was just unaware, as it's not something that would have crossed my mind to take. (I know we had it in jr high.) A requirement was personal finance or economics, though -- economics was what you took if in honors classes, but personal finance always seemed like a valuable class and did things like budgeting. I can see meal planning stuff fitting in easily there.

    (To the extent we talked about nutrition it would have been in health which was in jr high, along with STDs and drugs. I do know we learned about food groups in elementary school, and what a healthy meal is or how to plan one never really seemed that mysterious to me, but I don't associate it with book learning, but stuff I picked up at home, along with whatever cooking skills I had (some, not well developed) before deciding to teach myself in my 20s.)
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
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    rainbowbow wrote: »
    I just want to say that we had a "home-ec" class in my high school with version 1 and version 2 (advanced).


    Most people only take home-ec once because they don't have any other elective they want to do. I took home ec for 4 years (the last two without credit because they wouldn't give me credit for taking it again).

    In our advanced class we went over SO many things. How to file our taxes, how to budget properly and spend within your means, how to determine whether or not you can afford something, how to create a meal plan and shop for it accordingly, how to pick the best prices on food items, how to save money when possible, how to fix small household appliances/sew/etc., how to properly clean your living space (top to bottom, left to right, what to use, what not to use, how to make your own cleaning products, etc.), food safety and sanitation (what can be stored, left, etc. where and at what temperatures), all about calories, how to determine how much we need each day, how to schedule our meal plan that fits that, how to cook atleast 10 meals for ourselves (scrambled eggs, pasta, biscuits, pizza crust, ice cream, roasting veggies, salads, tortillas (tacos), etc.), all the knife skills, measuring skills, etc.


    I mean this class seriously taught me SOOO much about adulting. As someone with OCD i think i did extremely well and enjoyed the structure of this class and the passion my teacher had. While i didn't learn about macro nutrients, micro nutrients, the ways that each are broken down and assimilated, etc. I certainly learned enough!


    In my actual biology class i believe we did go over some of this stuff, but nothing specifically about nutrition. I did learn what ATP was, that the mitochondria was the powerhouse of the cell, etc.


    I think if everyone had teachers as passionate, caring, and interested in these topics as we are it would be completely different!


    My ideal situation would be: a class all about nutrition, food prep (cutting skills, cooking skills, shopping skills, food safety skills, etc,) where each Friday the kids in the class prepare a healthy meal in bulk for the lunch room. It would give them practical use of their learned skills, develop pride and encourage participation, and give students the skills they need to provide for themselves when they move out on their own.


    I can not even begin to tell you how many people i know who are not only ignorant about nutrition, but also about how to shop, cook, serve food.

    Perhaps more people ended up in home ec classes like the one I took, rather than the one you took. Mine was pretty pathetic. Teams of kids given ingredients, a recipe, and the tools needed then set loose without instruction. We were at least supervised so we didn't burn the school down.

    Most of us hadn't ever cooked before, so you know when the first recipe you try is a cheddar biscuit that it is not going to go well. I think the experience could have still worked, if the teacher had then gone over each team's work and said why it failed and how to do it right. Then, she could have had us do it again, correctly.

    Anyway, I learned nothing from home ec and it was eliminated from the curriculum a year or so after I took it.

    I taught myself to cook at home with an enormous cookbook my mother had - an all-encompassing one like "The Joy of Cooking", but that wasn't it. Can't think of the title just now. One day I just decided I wanted to make something for our Christmas party (I think I was ~14). I picked Galatoboureko. By some miracle it actually turned out perfectly and I decided I liked to cook. So I did.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    edited September 2016
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    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    How do you think PE should be structured? In junior high it was required for us, and basically went through a bunch of units that exposed us to various sports (track, tennis, gymnastics--my favorite, because I did gymnastics as a kid, volleyball, basketball are some I recall). Also, some calisthenics (don't recall if that was a unit or what -- I also know it was a big part of gym in elementary school, which was not every day but a unit or once a week or something, don't really recall). There was also some reading and written work. I hated gym in jr high, because I hated being forced to do sports I was bad at (I liked it when we were doing the things I liked, but over the course of the year that was a minority of the time).

    As long as there is proper instruction and supervision, I sure don't see anything wrong with this. After all, some kids don't like math, English or whatever subject and still have to take them. Having kids do things they don't like sometimes helps expand the comfort zone IMO.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited September 2016
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    I don't see anything especially wrong with it in a moral sense or whatever, but making me play basketball did not do anything to help me become a more active person -- if anything, the opposite. I was lucky that I already liked plenty of physical activities, like biking and running and x-country skiing and swimming and (as mentioned) gymnastics (although I never did that after my childhood and pre-teen years), as well as others. If the goal is to get people to have active lifestyles, I don't think it was particularly successful, so just like mine was wouldn't be my suggestion for what a good PE program should be, although I don't think it harmed me. (I also suspect my fellow students ended up fat in numbers consistent with the national average).

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