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]