Eat Well & Keep Moving : An Interdisciplinary Elementary Curriculum for Nutrition and Physical Activity

In North America obesity continues to be a problem, one that extends throughout life as children move into adolescence and adulthood and choose progressively less physical activity and less healthy diets. This public health issue needs to be addressed early in childhood, when kids are adopting the behaviors that they will carry through life. Eat Well & Keep Moving, Third Edition, will help children learn physically active and nutritionally healthy lifestyles that significantly reduce the risk of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases.

BENEFITS

This award-winning evidence-based program has been implemented in all 50 states and in more than 20 countries. The program began as a joint research project between the Harvard School of Public Health (currently the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) and Baltimore Public Schools. In extensive field tests among students and teachers using the program, children ate more fruits and vegetables, reduced their intake of saturated and total fat, watched less TV, and improved their knowledge of nutrition and physical activity. The program is also well liked by teachers and students. This new edition provides fourth- and fifth-grade teachers with the following:

• Nutrition and activity guidelines updated according to the latest and best information available

• 48 multidisciplinary lessons that supply students with the knowledge and skills they need when choosing healthy eating and activity behaviors

• Lessons that address a range of learning outcomes and can be integrated across multiple subject areas, such as math, language arts, social studies, and visual arts

• Two new core messages on water consumption and sleep and screen time along with two new related lessons

• A new Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate, created by nutrition experts at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, that offers children simple guidance in making healthy choices and enhances the USDA’s MyPlate

Eat Well & Keep Moving also offers a web resource that contains numerous reproducibles, many of which were included in the book or the CD-ROM in previous editions. The web resource also details various approaches to getting parents and family members involved in Eat Well & Keep Moving.

A Holistic Approach

Eat Well & Keep Moving is popular because it teaches nutrition and physical activity while kids are moving. The program addresses both components of health simultaneously, reinforcing the link between the two. And it encompasses all aspects of a child’s learning environment: classroom, gymnasium, cafeteria, hallways, out-of-school programs, home, and community centers. Further, the material is easily incorporated in various classroom subjects or in health education curricula.

Eight Core Principles

Central to its message are the eight core Principles of Healthy Living. Those principles—at least one of which is emphasized in each lesson—have been updated to reflect key targets as defined by the CDC-funded Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration partnership. These are the principles:

• Make the switch from sugary drinks to water.

• Choosse colorful fruits and vegetables instead of junk food.

• Choose whole-grain foods and limit foods with added sugar.

• Choose foods with healthy fat, limit foods high in saturated fat, and avoid foods with trans fat.

• Eat a nutritious breakfast every morning.

• Be physically active every day for at least an hour per day.

• Limit TV and other recreational screen time to two hours or less per day.

• Get enough sleep to give the brain and body the rest it needs.

Flexible, Inexpensive, Easy to Adopt

The entire curriculum of Eat Well & Keep Moving reflects the latest research and incorporates recommendations from the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It fits within school curricula, uses existing school resources, is inexpensive to implement, and is easy to adopt. The content is customizable to school and student population profiles and can help schools meet new criteria for federally mandated wellness policies.

Most important, armed with the knowledge they can gain from this program, elementary students can move toward and maintain healthy behaviors throughout their lives.

Lilian W.Y. Cheung, DSc, is lecturer and director of health promotion and communication in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and has been a co-investigator at the Harvard Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity. She was the co-principal investigator for the original Eat Well & Keep Moving controlled trial in Baltimore Public Schools, the curriculum of which became the foundation for the first edition of this book. Her work focuses on the translation of science-based recommendations into public health communications and programs to promote healthy lifestyles for prevention and control of chronic disease.

Dr. Cheung co-developed three websites at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: The Nutrition Source, The Obesity Prevention Source, and the Asian Diabetes Prevention Initiative. She co-edited Child Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity (1995) with the late Surgeon General Dr. Julius Richmond and co-authored Be Healthy! It’s A Girl Thing: Food, Fitness and Feeling Great! (2003, 2010), a book for adolescent girls. Her latest book, Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, is co-authored with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh (2010, 2011) and has been translated into 17 countries. In her leisure time she enjoys gardening, yoga, cooking, meditation, and chi gong.

Hank Dart, MS, is a health communications consultant who works in prevention and control for the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine. He has worked for more than two decades in health communication and health education both on the federal level and in academia. He managed the education component of the Eat Well & Keep Moving study, and he developed all the educational materials for the program. He also managed the development of the popular health risk assessment website Your Disease Risk, and he coauthored the book Healthy Women, Healthy Lives. In his spare time, he enjoys trail running, Nordic skiing, and writing mediocre poetry.

Sari Kalin, MS, RD, LDN, is a registered dietitian with more than a decade of experience in health promotion and communication. She has been a wellness consultant with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, where she partnered with employers to design and deliver workplace wellness initiatives to engage employees and drive behavior change. Previously she was director of obesity prevention and wellness programs at South End Community Health Center; before that, she was program coordinator at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she managed The Nutrition Source website. In her spare time she enjoys fitness walking, cooking healthy foods, and playing jazz piano and accordion.

Brett Otis, BS, is an editorial and communications associate in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Harvard Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, where he lends strategic support to multiple websites, publications, and communications initiatives. Merging his background in journalism, media relations, and health communications, he is interested in the translation and visualization of research through multiplatform and multimedia channels to address public health and environmental issues. In his spare time he enjoys running, road cycling, exploring farmers’ markets, cooking, and photography.

Steven L. Gortmaker, PhD, is a professor of health sociology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he has been a faculty member since 1978. He directs the Harvard Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, whose mission is to design, implement, and evaluate programs that improve physical activity and nutrition; reduce overweight; and decrease risk of chronic disease among children. He was the co-principal investigator for the original Eat Well & Keep Moving controlled trial in Baltimore Public Schools, and he has more than 180 research publications to his credit. Through a randomized controlled trial, he helped develop Planet Health, the first middle school curriculum that proved to reduce the prevalence of obesity among girls through improvements in diet, increased physical activity, and reduced television viewing. He enjoys playing sports with his family, golfing, playing tennis, hiking, and reading.