The Future of Children: Spring 2006


Book Description

This volume examines the causes and consequences of increasing rates of obesity and overweight among children. In addition, it reviews specific policies and programs aimed at reducing obesity and overweight and the related health problems that result. Contents: Introducing the Issue, Christina Paxson and Elisabeth Donahue (Princeton University) Childhood Obesity: Trends and Potential Causes, Patricia M. Anderson (Dartmouth College) and Kristin F. Butcher (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago) The Consequences of Childhood Overweight and Obesity, Stephen R. Daniels (University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center) Treating Childhood Obesity and Associated Medical Conditions, Sonia Caprio (Yale University School of Medicine) The Role of Built Environments in Physical Activity, Eating, and Obesity in Children, James F. Sallis (San Diego State University and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) and Karen Glanz (Emory University) The Role of Child Care Settings in Obesity Prevention, Mary Story and Karen Kaphingst (University of Minnesota and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), and Simone French (University of Minnesota) The Role of Schools in Obesity Prevention, Mary Story, Karen Kaphingst, and Simone French Markets and Childhood Obesity Policy, John Cawley (Cornell University) The Role of Parents in Preventing Childhood Obesity, Ana C. Lindsay, Juhee Kim, and Steven Gortmaker (Harvard School of Public Health), and Katarina M. Sussner (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)




Healthy Schools, Healthy Lives


Book Description

With childhood obesity hitting alarmingly high levels and given high profile in the media today, this book looks at what schools could and should be doing to tackle the problem. Research has shown there is a link between weight, lifestyle and attainment. This book will identify ideas and strategies for all primary schools to help educate children and parents about obesity. The book aims to help teachers introduce good eating habits, help children and parents understand the importance of healthy balanced meals, examine how physical activity contributes to weight loss and its maintenance, as well as providing teachers with a list of useful contacts for outside professional support.




Free for All


Book Description

As this book takes us on an eye-opening journey into the nation's school kitchens, the author offers an assessment of school food in the United States. She reveals the forces that determine how lunch is served, such as the financial troubles of schools, the commercialization of childhood, and the reliance on market models. The author explores the deep politics of food provision from multiple perspectives including history, policy, nutrition, environmental sustainability, taste, and more. How did our children end up eating nachos, pizza, and Tater Tots for lunch? How did we get into the absurd situation in which nutritionally regulated meals compete with fast food items and snack foods loaded with sugar, salt, and fat? What is the nutritional profile of the federal meals? How well are they reaching students who need them? Opening a window onto our culture as a whole, she concludes with a vision for change: fresh, healthy food for all children as a regular part of their school day.




State of the World 2007


Book Description

Published annually in 28 languages, each edition draws on the breadth of expertise of the Worldwatch Institute's team of writers and researchers. It is essential for anyone concerned with building a positive, global future.




Combat Fat for Kids


Book Description

Childhood obesity is a growing and worrying epidemic in our country. Kids these days are not getting the appropriate foods and healthy activity they need. They are bombarded constantly by marketers selling them on highly processed snacks, drinks, and junk food and they've become the victims of isolating technology which only enables them to stay at home instead of going outside to play. Combat Fat for Kids offers an alternative plan of action for parents to help their children become more aware of good decisions and initiate solid solutions to improve the health of the entire family and beat this deadly disease. Written by acclaimed fitness expert James Villepigue and noted health writer Jo Brielyn, Combat Fat for Kids offers a comprehensive plan that will finally help kids to form better health habits, a more active life and a very bright future. The nutritional and exercise programs featured in the book are effective because they are geared toward the mindset and interests of the family as a whole. The book encourages wholesome nutrition, including whole, unprocessed food choices and embraces local and sustainable food that their young body's were designed to consume. Daily activities are included, that will add a spark to their body's natural fat fighting defense, as well as "kid play", sports, and family-based events. Additional sections on behavioral change provides the proper psychological framework for ingraining healthy choices that will last a lifetime. Combat Fat for Kids includes expert advice and tips from top nutritionists, dieticians, fitness professionals, and psychologists to provide a highly reliable resource that's built on an easy-to-understand foundation that can be adapted to meet the needs of every family. Combat Fat for Kids is also a great and important tool for every parent interested in making the process a more collaborative one for the whole family.




Social Justice and the Urban Obesity Crisis


Book Description

Melvin Delgado focuses on urban obesity in populations of colour, dissecting the issue from individual, family, group, community, and policy perspectives. After syrveying the history of urban obesity, anti-obesity policies and programs, and the role of social work in addressing this threat, Delgado moves through social, ecological, environmental, and spatial aggravators, such as the food industry's nefarious advertising strategies.




Speaking of Death


Book Description

In the post-9/11 moments, months, and years, America has come to develop a new mortality awareness. Death, and our understanding that it can be sudden and is certainly inevitable, is being talked about more than ever before. As the team in this volume shows through groundbreaking research, surveys, interviews, and vignettes, death awareness has grown strong, and has changed the way we think and act, not only in relation to ourselves and our loved ones, but in relation to society overall. Those changes include nuances from increases in the number and size of college courses focused on death, rapid growth of death books, death photography, television shows dealing with death, as well as the recording and dissemination of death videos from those that show family members dying peacefully to the execution of terrorists or their captives. Impromptu street creations to memorialize common people who have died have emerged, as have new ways to dispose of dead bodies, including blasting ashes into space or placing them under the sea or giving them a green resting place in a natural forest. Our means of grieving, coping, and beliefs about afterlife have been altered, too. This work also includes a look at cosmologists and physicists who have revised their theories on humanity's legacy when our world meets a fateful end, who propose a means by which mankind's achievements might survive indefinitely, transporting from one universe to another without violating the known laws of physics. This book will intrigue all with an interest in considering not only death and how 9/11 changed America's views on and beliefs about it, but also considering what could lie beyond that end for all of us.




The Future of Children: Spring 2005


Book Description

"School Readiness," the first issue in "The Future of Children" publication, critically summarizes the research on the origin and trajectory of the racial and ethnic gap in the early years from several theoretical perspectives. In particular, the focus is on determining when these differences start to emerge, in what areas they appear, what factors contribute to their development by the time children enter grade school, and what can be done about them.




Scientific Influences on Early Childhood Education


Book Description

Scientific Influences on Early Childhood Education offers a new framework for examining the diverse scientific perspectives that shape early childhood education. As the field takes on an increasing role in addressing children’s educational, developmental, and environmental needs, it is critical to more fully understand and appreciate the diverse scientific roots of contemporary early childhood education. This edited collection brings together leading researchers to explain and unpack perspectives that are not often associated with early childhood education, yet have made significant contributions to its development and evolution. Essential reading for anyone working with young children, this critical and insightful text illuminates the connections between our social values, science, and research in the field.




Extended Schools and Children's Centres


Book Description

Featuring helpful checklists, models of good practice, templates and photocopiable resources that can be used in development work, this highly practical book will be an invaluable resource for anyone involved with implementing Every Child Matters in extended schools and children’s centres. As well as setting out roles and expectations, this unique book clearly and thoroughly explains how to: implement and meet the five ECM outcomes for well-being provide extended services and wraparound care work in partnership with agencies and private, voluntary and community sector providers quality-assure and evaluate the impact of provision and care self-review, monitor and evaluate the ECM outcomes in line with national standards and OFSTED. From leaders and managers, to front-line staff and volunteers, everyone will find this step-by-step handbook packed with useful advice and suggestions for further reading, websites and resources.