A Preston primary school’s fight against childhood obesity (Assignment 2 -article 1)

With one in four children starting school in Lancashire obese, Clayton Brook Primary school is playing a large part in trying to change this statistic.

The school, near Bamber Bridge in Preston, is applying the government’s ‘Every child matters campaign' by carrying out unique strategies such as parent and child cookery courses, school council meetings, and food tasting sessions to ensure every child is kept fit and healthy.

‘£119 million per year’
Figures released last month revealed the NHS in Lancashire are spending around £119 million a year on caring for and treating overweight adults and children and it’s expected this figure will increase.

Anne Smith, Head teacher at Clayton Brook primary, understands the importance of a school’s influence on a healthy lifestyle. She said: “I think everybody knows how influential a school is on children’s lives. From the nursery and reception stage children are encouraged to eat healthily, not only at lunch time, but with the snacks they choose to eat.”

Staying active
Every morning all the children are encouraged to take part in the ‘wake n’ shake’ activity. Lasting for about 15 minutes it aims to give all the children a healthy start to the day. With timetabled physical education of 1.5 hours per week, the ‘wake n’ shake,’ and after school sporting activities that take place most nights, Clayton Brook pupils are not short of physical exercise.

Choice
A further inventive initiative the school is involved with is letting children make up their own minds about what are healthy choices to eat.

The school council, made up of several infant and junior school pupils, meet with head cook Anne Taylor on a regular basis to discuss menus and decide what they would like to see on the menu. Anne said: “Obviously we can’t make them come up with healthy ideas, but we are finding that more and more the children are discussing and choosing healthier options.

“I find that my job is much more satisfying, when I’m cooking healthy food, and it’s nicer to think that you’ve made the end product rather than just bringing something out of the freezer.”

Parent learning
During the end of last term, Anne lead a cookery course for eight mums who wanted to learn how to cook properly and healthily. The course took the parents back to the basics of cookery and every Friday afternoon they were taught a new, traditional recipe. Anne added: “The course was really, really successful. We wanted to teach parents the basics of healthy cooking so hopefully when they went home at night they could cook real, substantial dishes for their children.”

Anne is currently going into other schools nearby to encourage and promote the course and hopes to carry on with the course at Clayton Brook this term.

Play the slideshow below to see what happens at Clayton Brook primary at lunchtime.

"Another path that leads to obesity"

The BBC this morning published online an article based on US researchers finding yet another way in which obesity can be accomplished.


Apparently "having a poor diet can trigger a signalling system which prompts the body to consume even more." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7649261.stm) So basically eating unheathy makes you fat. Did society not establish that quite a few centuries ago? It seems to be that 'new findings' and 'new research,' with regards to obesity, always melt down to this same conclusion, and it's one I think I was taught in primary school.

This time however its all about the hypothalamus; a structure in the brain responsible for maintaining a constant and steady bodily state. According to Dongsheng Cai, assistant professor of physiology at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, the cell-signalling pathway, known to be associsted with inflammation, has now been found to also influence the regulation of food intake.

Stimulating this pathway in mice led to an increase in their energy consumption, while suppressing the pathway encouraged them to maintain normal food intake, consequently regulating body weight.

Metabolic inflammation it seems is the big picture behind this particular research and a picture I can actually understand. Metabolic inflammation is caused by too much energy consumption and although less severe than other forms of inflammatory response - "it causes cellular dysfunction, which can decrease the regulation of several physiological processes, including metabolism.” (Breakthrough Digest Medical News Association.com)

The question is however, what does obesity look like in the North West of England?

North West Health

A common interest to us all is health. Our own health, our loved ones' health and the future of the nation's health all concern everyone of us and as British citizens it's the NHS at the centre of the picture.

The picture however, in today's media, is usually bleak. We're constantly being fed disaster stories on how the NHS has failed us and how the standard of care has dropped to what is often described as a 'catastrophic' level.

My blog is going to discuss and debate primarily 'social health issues', such as obesity, cigarette addiction and alcoholism, possibly the most dicussed and debated about health issues in contemporary media outputs.

The NHS has its own way of dealing with these issues, and like any national service - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

The North West region will be the main focus throughout the blog, although national issues will quite often be the centre of discussion.