Nutrition/Fitness Hotlist

B. Paton

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/5aday/index.htm

The overview from this website states: “5 A Day for Better Health is a national program and partnership that seeks to increase the number of daily servings of fruits and vegetables Americans eat to five or more. The 5 A Day program provides easy ways to add more fruits and vegetables into your daily eating patterns.” There are links to other 5 a Day web pages, as well as to Nutrition & Physical Activity sites. The “5 a Day links” page contains links to fun food sites. I thought there was lots of good information for teachers and anyone else who was interested in a better diet – including the fruit/vegetable of the month. October has information about the history of our holiday favorite – the gingerbread man.

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/physical/index.htm

This site had numerous links related to physical activity. Including the importance, how to get started, how to measure the intensity, and how to get started. There were no links specifically for teachers, although there was information on how to evaluate physical activity programs.

http://www.presidentschallenge.org/

This site shows different ways to get active and have fun doing it, all divided up into different categories: kids, teens, adults, seniors, and educators. It even lets you keep track of your progress online so you can see how close you are to reaching your goals.

http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/index_cwd.htm

This web page provides an online community setting for not only children with diabetes, but for teenagers, adults, and seniors. They have chat and message boards for parents with questions about their kids that have diabetes, as well as for those who have questions for themselves. It contains important news and conference dates, while giving the reader a bit of humor to see in diabetes.

http://www.dairycouncilofca.org/

The Dairy Council of California provides materials to educate consumers and teachers on the importance of making good food choices. Educational handouts (in PDF format) can be downloaded for free and are specifically designed for parents, school food service personnel, and educators. Lesson plans for grades K-12 are free for teachers in California, but can be purchased also by out-of-state teachers.

http://www.californiaprojectlean.org/

LEAN stands for Leaders Encouraging Activity and Nutrition. On its home page, is a link to a snack calculator that was fun to test using some of the things I have to snack on. Links include an Overview, California Programs, Consumer Materials, and Geomapping health information for our communities. The Geomapping may be useful to anyone who is familiar with GIS software and applicable databases. Under the Consumer Materials link, there is a link to “lesson plans” which provides pdf formatted resource kits for high schools. I looked at one and found a lesson plan entitled Advertising’s Hidden Messages. It will have direct application in my Practical Math class.

http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2000/document/contents.htm

I like this site as it has a lot of good information for me. I looked at the information about aiming for a reasonable weight, being more physically active. Both documents provided much information to help someone such as I get it together and work toward a healthier weight and activity. Good ABC’s for us to follow.

http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm

The PBS TeacherSource web site has a drop down list of grade level groups and topics such as diet and nutrition. The resource page that appears has numerous lesson topics, complete with lesson plans and teacher guides. At the high school level, some of the lesson plans are cross-curricular.

http://www.chiff.com/a/HalloweenHealth.htm

This is a timely site to look at considering the emphasis being placed on obesity and overweight children.

http://www.chiff.com/health/health.htm

This site is a guide to other sites, and as far as health was concerned, contained pages of links for health topics such as children’s, teen’s, dieting, mental health and fitness.