How teaching healthy lifestyles contributes to later life

a couple of years ago i came into touch

with some people from the public health

service in the south of the netherlands

in the region i grew up in and what they

told me about the health situation of

the people in our region was really

shocking to me people have more

overweight

have more chronic diseases and have a

lower life expectancy than anywhere else

in the rest of the netherlands

but what really shocked me

was the fact that this pattern of ill

health seemed to be unbreakable

because it’s passed down from generation

to generation

now today i want to talk to you about a

way i think we can improve this

situation

and for me the lever for change our

children

because by educating children about a

healthy lifestyle and by letting them

experience a healthy lifestyle we can

work at the root of the problem it’s

simple children who don’t learn an

unhealthy lifestyle won’t have to

unlearn it as adults

now i’ve worked in education for the

most of my adult life

and as educators we are really committed

to the well-being of the children we

work with

i mean we care about a lot more than

just high grades we care about their

safety

we care about the way they develop as a

person we care about their future

opportunities but somehow we don’t seem

to care about their physical health

now we seem to think that’s mainly for

the parents

isn’t that strange

i mean children are at school eight

hours a day

and we put the attention for their

physical health on hold for all those

hours i guess that’s really really

strange

now i was born in 1967

in the middle of the summer of love

and as great as that may sound the years

that followed weren’t that great at all

because i grew up in limburg in the

southern netherlands in a region that

was dominated by coal mines and a few

months after i was born the dutch

government started to shut down these

coal mines

and the effect was devastating

unemployment sword and a lot of the

unemployed gold miners had literally

nothing else to do but waiting for

better times

working in these coal mines was

physically intense and it required high

calorie food

and for a lot of the unemployed coal

miners their physical activity suddenly

stopped but food-wise that lifestyle

didn’t change

they gained weight up to a point where

they got too heavy and this really

became a problem for their health

we even have an expression for this in

the south of the netherlands

we call it a burgundian lifestyle

and although with every bite of

chocolate with every bit of junk food

with every glass of beer we get a little

bit closer to a heart attack we just

call it the paganian lifestyle and feel

good about it

however

given something bad a positive title

doesn’t change the situation

and the fact that children were and

still are confronted with this situation

too makes it even more worrying

now

i certainly don’t want to say that

everyone is overweight can really do

something about it because there are a

lot of reasons why people get overweight

and get sick

but if children learn an unhealthy

lifestyle that eventually leads to

overweight and illness then that really

gets you thinking

what can you do about that

i mean there is no quick and dirty

solution here and changing a deep-rooted

lifestyle may even take more than one

generation but we have to start

somewhere

now

we could start here in this room adults

but for us as adults it’s usually very

hard to unlearn something that we

learned throughout our lives

i mean many of you here today might

recognize the struggle with junk food or

the fact that we are more or less

addicted to sugar and salt

and i myself on more than one occasion

felt that i should use lose a few pounds

i want to share a secret with you

i like to look good in summer in

swimming trunks

but after a long winter this body just

doesn’t seem to want to cooperate

so i start eating less drinking less i

exercise more and i generally pay

attention to my health for a period of

time but then after a few months the

pounds just come back on because i

didn’t really change my lifestyle i just

took a break from my lifestyle

now it’s so frustrating for me and i

guess for many other people too it’s so

hard to unlearn something that you’ve

learned throughout your life so maybe it

would be much better to start working on

these habits these bad habits before

they become ingrained in our everyday

lives

now since 2015 we are working on this

project on this approach in the south of

limburg where we work on the healthy

lifestyle for children in schools

and the one thing these schools do is

integrate this approach into the core of

that daily business

not as a project

not as a temporary approach but as a

part of the school’s dna

and in this region this was really

necessary because the closing of these

coal mines is still felt here the

economic and the social effects are felt

mainly at the bottom of the social

ladder for families at the bottom of

social ladder healthy food and the

chance to participate in for instance

sport clubs are not automatically

available so children in these families

grow up with social disadvantages with

economic disadvantages but also with a

health disadvantage

so if schools start working on health

and healthy lifestyle then they

contribute to reducing these health

disadvantages and this is something

that’s really really necessary not only

in the south of limburg but anywhere

now our schools started by extending

their school day

by about an hour

and they use this hour to create a

longer lunch break during which children

receive a healthy lunch at school

now healthy food just wasn’t the norm at

our schools

three out of every 10 children came to

school without even having had breakfast

and if these children brought the

lunchbox if they brought a lunchbox then

the contents of that lunchbox would

mainly be unhealthy they would bring

like pizza slices or snack food or candy

bars and things like that

so if schools serve one healthy meal a

day at school then all children have at

least one opportunity to eat healthy one

time a day regardless the families they

grow up in

and the children like what we’re doing

here but i’m gonna get back to that

now this lunch we eat is not only about

the eating itself

it’s also about learning to make choices

because we served lunch as a buffet

and in this buffet there is eighty

percent of healthy products and twenty

percent are slightly less healthy

products

we stimulate children to make choices

we’re not saying never eat unhealthy we

are saying try to make as many healthy

choices as you can and try to know what

you’re choosing now this is very

important because besides the standard

lunch which consists of whole grain

bread dairy milk fruits vegetables and

things like that we also serve small

amounts of strange products

simply to stimulate tasting

now

picture this

a class filled with four-year-olds

standing over a bowl of dragon fruit

now dragon fruit looks kind of scary

and no one really knows what it will

taste like

so the big question is which kid will

dare to take the first bite because if

one kid does then a lot of others will

follow and we’ve learned that children

like this way of trying new food and

their taste palettes start to grow

now over the years

we tried a lot of things

and not everything was successful

once we tried seaweed

now for those of you who had seaweed

seaweed doesn’t only look strange

it also really tastes strange

and even the real daredevils in the

class didn’t manage to swallow it

and after school it even got to a point

where a concerned parent came to one of

the teachers and asked him if it was

really true that his daughter had to eat

cooked grass for lunch

because that’s what she thought she was

eating

now a healthy lifestyle is not only

about food and eating it’s also about

more and varied physical activity

children are at school for about eight

hours a day five days a week and a large

part of these hours we want them to sit

still

learning is somehow believed to be about

listening answering questions working on

assignment things like that

but that’s not what children are like at

all children have an inherent need to

move around to be physically active

and you know in our dutch schools we got

a maximum from of about two hours of

physical activity during the week a gym

class

and so apart from the small moments

during the breaks children mainly must

sit still

and more and more children are bothered

by always having to sit still

you can see this in the classroom the

sound of children which are shifting on

their chairs impatiently

maybe cutting up every now and then when

they really shouldn’t

to me they look like little volcanoes

filled with energy waiting to explode

and most children make it till the break

but then some don’t they explode in

class already it’s not entirely their

fault it’s also the fault of a system

that just doesn’t fit their needs

so we introduce more moments of movement

more moments of activity during the

school day

we do this during the lessons with small

moments of movement called energizers so

let’s say for instance a teacher wants

to teach his children about

multiplication tables

he will ask all the children to stand up

and he will take a ball he will ask a

question and throw the ball to one of

the children the child catches the ball

and gives the answer and in turn throws

the ball to a next child who then will

give the next answer

now by doing this children are not

sitting for a while

they’re physically active and they are

re-energized to go on with lessons

afterwards

these are small moments of movement but

during the lunch break we create an hour

of extra physical activity for our

children

after they had lunch children go outside

where they can play sports games and

other activities

and they like what the school does here

again you can see children for instance

play football or basketball but they

could also be engaged in a drama

activity or a jazz dance activity there

is a lot of activities which where she

can choose from the children really like

it and like with the energizers they

come back to the classroom afterwards

and are re-energized to go on with the

rest of the lesson

now

as great as this all may sound

when we started in 2015 we initially

provoked a lot of resistance

a lot of resistance

most most teachers just didn’t feel

responsible

they thought the attention for the

physical health of their pupils was

mainly for the parents they didn’t feel

responsible

the parents weren’t very fond of our

plans either

because they thought we were telling

them that they didn’t pay enough

attention to the children’s health

so it took quite some time to convince

parents and teachers to go along with us

now six years later

there’s no resistance anymore we got

everyone on board and this is due to two

i guess very important reasons the first

reason is quite obvious

the children like what we’re doing they

like school better now than they did

before and it’s very simple if the

children are happy so are the parents

and the teachers

the second reason is a bit more complex

because it says a lot about

the the results that we generated with

this approach mric university conducted

a multi-disciplinary research into the

effects of working on a healthy

lifestyle with children in schools

and they found that these children now

after four years

are healthier than before

they have a healthier weight have less

belly fat they are generally fitter and

they’ve adapted healthy food habits at

school as well as at home

now

there is a lot of potential in this

approach because if children maintain

these healthy habits throughout the rest

of their life then they might pass them

on to their children just like my

parents did with their less healthy

habits

working on early prevention like this

could really be a game changer that

could bring us a lot closer to a healthy

generation and more and more people are

starting to see the opportunities here

parents teachers policy makers on all

levels and even businesses they all want

to contribute to a healthy generation

and our children deserve to grow up

healthy that is even laid down in the

1989 convention on the rise of the child

and still now 30 years later not all

children have equal health opportunities

not even in the netherlands

so we haven’t won the race yet

but we are well on our way

the movement toward the healthy

generation is glowing slowly but surely

now

my talk today was not only intended to

be informative

it’s also a call to action

if you look at the children in your

lives what do you see

do you see room for improvement where

whether health is concerned do you see a

way that you could contribute

do you feel responsible

because in my opinion it is high time

that we all take responsibility for the

health of our next generation

each and every one of us on his or her

own level sometimes privately as a

parent an aunt or an uncle or someone

else who’s close to the child

sometimes professionally in health or in

education

we need this collective effort to be

successful and we needed to break this

pattern of ill health that seemed so

unbreakable

in my opinion

not doing anything

is really not an option

thank you very much

[Applause]