Traditionally, parents have considered plumpness in children to be a sign of health and happiness — but there is growing concern among health professionals about obesity and unhealthy eating habits among children.
This has seen the Heart Foundation launch the Edu-Heart programme, aimed at preventing heart disease and childhood obesity. The foundation’s goal is to join forces with primary schools in an effort to encourage healthier choices at school tuck shops, and by educating parents to pack healthy and nutritious lunches.
The Edu-Heart programme is a pilot project that is running in Western Cape primary schools and may be extended to other provinces later.
Participating schools are given a questionnaire to complete about the food choices available and are provided with information packs to help them design healthier menus for tuck shops.
If schools adhere to the criteria around food-group selection and cooking methods, their tuck shops will be endorsed by the Heart Foundation.
The initiative was praised by Dr Thandi Puoane, a health scientist at the University of Western Cape.
“This can be a beneficial programmme for our research as well as preventing obesity,” she said.
“Because the tables have turned over the past few years, parents are no longer influencing their children, but children are influencing them. If Edu-Heart educates children, the children will be able to change their family’s eating habits.”
She said issues such as socio- economic problems and unavailability of nutritious products in townships contribute to the high rate of obesity among African women and children. She said food hawkers need to be made aware of the importance of selling nutritious food, instead of focusing only on profits. A study conducted by the South African Nutrition Expert Panel (Sanep) revealed a major divide between township and suburban schools. Half of schoolchildren in Soweto and a third in Bosmont buy food from hawkers, while in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg the vast majority take packed lunches from home.
Maria Mphokeng, a hawker at Zenzele Primary in Alexandra, admits that she has never thought about the health implications of the food she sells, but is driven by the demands of the children. She says her best-sellers are vetkoek, fizzy drinks, crisps and bunny chow (a half loaf of white bread stuffed with chips, polony, Russian sausage and atchar). She fears that introducing healthy food may damage her business and that the food may be more expensive, thus driving her customers away.
Liz Kullman, a member of the Sanep panel, says there is a strong correlation between lunch-box usage and affluence. She says schools in more affluent areas are more pro- active in influencing what children eat, whereas in less privileged areas the schools tend to concede to the demands of the children.
According to the Heart Foundation, South Africa does not measure up well in the childhood obesity stakes, weighing in at a rate of 12%, which is not far off from the global average of 14%. She believes this is because of unhealthy eating habits and lack of exercise.
Birth to Twenty (BTT), a long- running study within the department of paediatrics at Wits University, has tracked the health and development of a group of children born in 1990.
Their research reveals that of 386 schools studied, only 30,6% of township schools offered extramural activities compared with 91,5% of suburban schools.
The research also shows that children at township schools spent an average of 19 minutes walking to school each day, compared with two minutes for children at suburban schools.