User:Sfreneau/sandbox

The Rudd Center For Food Policy and Obesity addresses the issues of childhood obesity in schools through school wellness policies. School wellness policies include nutritional guidelines for all food provided on campus, ensuring that they promote healthy eating and prevent childhood obesity. The wellness policies also include nutrition education, physical activity, and other school-based activity goals designed to promote student wellness and lastly the policies include measurement plans to implement the policies. However, there are issues with the policies as they are in place now and there are recommendations to improve these problems. First off, the policies are often incomplete, making it difficult to implement the policies and guarantee that they are being followed by the schools. In order to fix this, The Rudd Center suggests making the policies public and requiring specific language on implementation and evaluation so that there is no confusion on the expectations of the wellness policies. Another issue with the policies is the vague language that often comprises the policies. The logical step to correcting this is to evaluate the policies and specify the guidelines clearly to make sure that there is no confusion about what is required of the schools. Often times the policy committees lack representation from important school personnel like P.E. teachers and students and from important members of the community. A possible solution to this would be establishing a permanent health wellness committee to oversee the implementation of policy and update it periodically. The last issue that is related to the school wellness policies is that unhealthy foods and drinks that are low in nutrients and high in sugar, calories, and fat are heavily marketed to school students, encouraging them to eat this unhealthy food. To prevent this, the school wellness policies should include specific language prohibiting the marketing of food/drinks at schools.