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Food Dudes Win the Kids Over into Fruit, Veg and Fitness Fun

Posted on: Monday, 27 June 2005, 09:00 CDT

Four superheroes fighting to save humankind from the clutches of the evil General Junk could hold the answer to tackling childhood obesity.

The Food Dudes quartet have influenced thousands of primary school children to eat more fruit and vegetables, with their battles to save the life force from their arch enemy.

Now experts at the University of Wales, Bangor, who devised the Food Dudes programme, are hoping a new gang of four can persuade children to be more active.

At an all-Wales symposium in Cardiff yesterday, Charlotte Hardman, Food Dudes research officer said the ultimate aim was to create a Fit Food Dudes programme to marry the two aims of a healthy diet and exercise. She said, 'We feel this programme could be used by schools throughout Wales in preventing childhood obesity. We've shown that the programmes have a large and long-lasting impact on children's food consumption and physical activity.'

The Food Dudes programme was created by the university's School of Psychology after experts found that children's eating habits were primarily influenced by what their friends and peers were eating.

Despite all the healthy eating messages, children are often reluctant to eat fruit or vegetables.

The Food Dudes characters were designed as positive role models, who through their adventures would encourage children to taste fruit and vegetables, by making them 'cool'. The characters are carrot- loving Charlie, Rocco who likes broccoli, Raz, whose favourite fruit is raspberries and tomato-eating Tom.

Videos, which are shown in primary schools during a 16-day intervention, show the characters gaining their strength to fight off General Junk by eating fruit and vegetables.

The children are given daily rewards - stickers, pens and pencils - for trying and eating fruit and vegetables and also receive letters of encouragement from the characters. After the 16-day intensive course, the schools run an indefinite maintenance programme to foster a culture of change in eating habits.

At the second All-Wales symposium on exercise science, sports medicine research and sports psychology yesterday, Ms Hardman said the team had seen a massive improvement in the amount of fruit and vegetables eaten. Research at a primary school in Salford revealed that children were eating less than 10% of servings of broccoli, peas, green beans and pears before the Food Dudes programme was introduced. Afterwards they were eating two-thirds more of each serving - there was a seven-fold increase in the amount of peas eaten by pupils.

Ms Harman said, 'Simply making fruit and vegetables available to schoolchildren doesn't mean that they will eat them. It seems that schools need something like Food Dudes to encourage children to taste the foods and then eat them.

'In all the schools Food Dudes has been implemented we have had positive feedback from children and the teachers. The teachers also reported unexpected benefits in other areas, including improved behaviour and attendance.'

Professor Fergus Lowe, the healthy eating programme director said, in an article about the Food Dudes programme last year, 'When it comes to eating healthily, children should not be written off. Far from it. They can change quite easily to eating healthy diets, if they are helped to do so.'

Colette Owen, head teacher of Our Lady's Primary School, in Bangor, which implemented the Food Dude programme, said, 'It was an incredible experience in our school and we felt that the children gained so much from it.

'Most of the children have started to eat fruit and vegetables, take-up has been incredible.

'Because the Food Dudes programme has been in school, the children have become so eager to be healthy eaters - when you go into the playground they are eating fruit. 'The feedback from parents has also been tremendous, they have told us that they had lost hope of changing the eating habits of their children. They said that without this they never would have achieved it themselves.

'Unless it happens to your school, it's hard to get across what happens - the enthusiasm and the buzz around school is just amazing.'

The team at University of Wales, Bangor, has also devised a Fit'n'Fun Dudes programme - based on the same concept - to encourage children to be more physically active. Each child is given a pedometer to measure how many steps they do a day and is then challenged to increase that activity by 1,500 steps a day.

They are again given rewards for achieving their goals and letters of encouragement and support from the characters. Early results revealed the programme has a significant, sustained impact on children, especially boys.

Ms Hardman added, 'Our findings are very positive and we are currently seeking funding to carry out a large evaluation of the physical activity programme in schools and explore ways that schools could do it themselves without the support of researchers. Our ultimate aim is to combine the healthy eating and physical activity programmes to develop something like Fit Food Dudes.' Many children aged five are already obese and at risk of later problems: Childhood obesity is increasing dramatically in Wales, threatening the future health of the youngest generation.

UK statistics suggest that one in five six-year-olds is overweight and one in 10 is obese.

But research by Swansea University has now suggested that these figures may be conservative.

A 16-year project collecting the heights and weights of all five- year-olds in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, as they started school revealed that 8% of girls and 5% of boys are obese by the time they are five.

Childhood obesity is associated with many long-term health conditions, like heart disease and cancer, which can have serious consequences later in life.

But it is not just concern about potential health problems in the thirties or forties - doctors are seeing more cases of Type 2 diabetes in children and teenagers.

The causes of obesity are widespread and varied, but at its most basic, it is caused by an imbalance between the amount of energy consumed and the amount of energy expended.

It is thought that increasingly sedentary childhoods spent in front of the television or games console, are helping to fuel the obesity problem. Steps taken to increase physical activity pay off: The Fit'n'Fun Dudes characters encourage primary schoolchildren to take more exercise through a song and personal letters to pupils.

Each pupil is also given a pedometer to measure how many steps they take a day, as an indicator of their physical activity levels.

A daily target of between an extra 1,000 and 2,000 steps is then set and children are encouraged to achieve it.

Research carried out at two primary schools in North Wales by the team from the University of Wales, Bangor, found that boys were generally more active than girls. They were doing between 13,000 and 14,000 steps a day, compared with just under 11,000 for girls. During the two-week intervention programme, these levels rose to 16,000 steps for boys and up to 15,000 for girls.

And after three months the girls were still doing about 14,000 steps a day and the boys 15,000.

Figures from the school which was not included in the programme found that there was an initial drop off in the number of steps boys and girls were initially doing - 12,000 and 10,000 a day respectively - when the programme was introduced at the other school.

Three months later and girls were walking 12,000 steps a day and boys 14,000. Researchers believe the change in the amount of activity done was the result of the start of spring. It works in real life: Research has consistently shown that encouraging children to try and taste fruit and vegetables instead of just providing them, will encourage them to eat more.

The Food Dudes team from the University of Wales, Bangor, carried out research at two primary schools in inner city London to measure the programme's impact. Children at Hill Mead Primary, Brixton, took part in the 16-day Food Dudes intervention programme and the follow- up maintenance phase.

Children at Stockwell Primary, in Stockwell, did not take part in the programme, but did receive the same fruit and vegetables.

Before Food Dudes was introduced, for children in the Brixton school fruit consumption was 20% and vegetable 35%.

In Stockwell, consumption rates were 11% for fruit and 16% for vegetables.

After Food Dudes was introduced the rates at Brixton increased to 69% for fruit and 55% for vegetables. In Stockwell the amount of fruit eaten remained the same, but vegetable consumption fell to 6%.

After four months, when Brixton was in the maintenance phase, fruit consumption rates were 56% and vegetable rates 53%. Figures for Stockwell were 9% and 10%.

Source: Western Mail

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