A handful of studies show that school-based programs can help
children lose weight, or at least avoid putting it on. Results
were presented at the North American Association for the Study
of Obesity’s (NAASO) Annual Scientific Meeting this week in Las
Vegas. In the first year of a three-year study, a school-based
fitness program, the FitKid Project at the Medical College of
Georgia, showed that with 80 minutes of physical activity (based
on acquiring motor skills through sports and 40 minutes of
vigorous exercise with heart rates above 150 beats per minute)
and 40 minutes of academic help, including homework help,
students can increase their bone density, improve their
cardiovascular fitness, have a smaller increase in their waist
circumference and decrease their body fat percentage. Over the
course of a school year, third-graders in Augusta-Richmond
County who participated in at least 40 percent of the daily,
after-school classes saw a 0.7 percent decrease in their body
fat, compared to a 0.1 increase in bod