Nutrition School gets grant to fight obesity

According to the Surgeon General, in 1999 13 percent of US children from age six to 11 were overweight. As nutritionists fear that the world may soon be afflicted by an onslaught of obesity-related diseases, it has become increasingly important to research what is making children so fat.

With the help of the US government, researchers at the Tufts Nutrition School are looking into ways to prevent obesity in young elementary school children in Somerville. The program is aimed at helping high risk students and is supported by an almost $500,000 grant from the US Health and Human Services Department (HHS).

Researchers will study 1,000 children from the first and third grades in the Somerville public school system. One thousand children from two control group school systems will also be involved.

The program, called "Shape Up Somerville: Eat Smart Play Hard," will not begin until next year and is scheduled to take three years to complete _ one year each for intervention, study and a follow-up analysis. The principal investigator for the study is Dr. Christina Economos, an assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

"The program focuses on elementary school-aged children and trying to promote healthy lifestyles in elementary school children," said Dr. Jeanne Goldberg, director of the Tufts Center on Nutrition Communication said, who is a co-investigator in the research initiative.

Preliminary plans are for subjects to burn 125 kilocalories through physical activity a day, as well as several healthy eating choices. Progress will be gauged by tracking the students' Body Mass Index _ a measurement of their relative weight based on their height.

According to the researchers, children are at high risk for obesity because of lack of exercise and high calorie foods. The food most easily available to them is "calorically dense food, and [there are] lots of opportunities to eat [those foods] at low prices," Goldberg said. "These stack up to create an imbalance in the energy equation."

The constraints on school lunch programs may be one of the causes of the problem, according to Goldberg. The programs are required to use commodity foods from the US Department of Agriculture surplus program, while at the same time the Federal Government mandates them to follow certain nutritional serving guidelines. Budget constraints add to the problem.

The "Shape Up Somerville" program was selected by the HHS along with 24 other programs from an initial applicant pool of 300. The researchers say their work is unique because it looks at small changes throughout the day, and provides the students with many choices.