Kids Care Blog

According to a new statistics on last Wednesday underscored the need for more vegetables and fruits in the diets of kids in the U.S.A. The Institute of Medicine focused on school-based food programs to demonstrate that a lot of students are consuming too much solid fats and sugars rather than having the required amount of key nutrients from various fruits and vegetables.

Their evaluation focused on especially breakfast and lunch programs at American schools. The study discover that kids aged 5 to 18 ate 50% or less of the vegetables recommended by the American government’s dietary guidelines, and fruits intake was 50% or less than the recommended amount for children 9 to18 years old. The study also revealed that kids take high amounts of sodium and solid fats from different types of fast food items. Virginia Stallings, one of the professors at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and chair of the committee, said “Most Americans, not just children, are not eating as balanced a diet as we want,” she added, “There are so few times where we have an opportunity to touch every child’s life.”

Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture by President-elect Barack Obama, said to the USDA, “must place nutrition at the center of all food assistance programs administered by the department.” Officials at the USDA are updating their nutrition and meal supplies used for U.S school breakfast and lunch programs, and looked for suggestions from the Institute of Medicine. These programs are managed by the U.S. Agriculture Department and are put down for reauthorization by Congress in 2009. On the other hand, Jim Weill of the Food Research and Action center said, “School meals are absolutely essential not just to reduce hunger, but to kids’ health,” “Obesity has helped focus attention that school meals should be better.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approximation that 13.9% of kids aged 2 to 5, 18.8% of those aged between 6 to11, and above 17 percent of those 12 to 19 are overweight.

The Prime Minister of UK, Gordon Brown recently announced every two-year-old kid would get a free nursery place under policies for a major development of childcare. Every year up to 600,000 teenagers could benefit as the UK Government seeks to build on current provision for three and four-year-old. This plan, discovered in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, and the project could value in excess of £1 billion. The proposal go additional than an already-announced special scheme to assist 20,000 low or fixed income parents with two-year-old kids. They will feature in Mr. Brown’s make-or-break speech to the Labor Party meeting in Manchester on Tuesday, when the UK’s Prime Minister will promise a “new wave of social mobility - upward mobility - people being able to do better than their parents”.

Mr. Brown said to the newspaper

I think more choice for women and for families is one of themes of the next stage of our policy reforms.

He also said

What I want us to do is to create thousands more nursery places, not just for three and four-year-old but also for two-year-old.

Moreover he added

This is not a Government that walks away but a Government that’s on the side of hard-working families, helping them to climb the ladder.

Nowadays parents achieve up to 15 hours of free childcare per week when their children are three and four years old. Cabinet believe exposure to learning environments at an earlier age will develop achievements at primary school. Now wait to see what kind of out come get the UK’s Citizen by this decision.