I have finally had some success in my mission to find children who are being eductated about food and diet and guess what - it's happening in our area.
MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it!) is an organisation "dedicated to reducing global childhood overweight and obesity levels" and I have found programmes that are running right here in Preston!
Not only does the organisation look fun, engaging and beneficial, it's also free! I stumbled acroos it in the LEP itself after journalist Aasama Day ran a feature on nine year old Iona Jackson who weighs eight stone nine.
Wanting to know more I visited the MEND website http://www.mendprogramme.org/, which I must say, as an obesity blogger, got me excited!
The programme targets the perfect age group, seven to 13 year olds, at the perfect time, after school, for just the right amount of time, 10 weeks!
The only disappointmenting fcator I have found, is that it's privately funded. I'm not here knocking private funding, in fact I have admiration for companies who pour money into projects like this, it's just that I wish the central and local governments would do more.
Ok there's arguments for and against this, and I can imagine many tax payers will argue that they don't want to have to pay for other people's poor diets, but all in all, as I've previously mentioned, it should be on the curriculum.
At present 30% of children are overweight, which is a higher figure than the STI percentage in teenagers. Consequently if sex education is compulsory, then so should 'health and diet education.'
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