10:00am Wednesday 10th March 2010
By Stephen Lewis
IN the gym of the new Energise sports centre at Oaklands School, the excitement is reaching fever pitch. “Go, Bailey! Go, go, go!” screeches a young voice. “Come on! Hurry!” someone else shouts.
Two teams of youngsters are playing Under and Over. It’s a relay game where the aim is to pass a ball ‘under and over’ down a row of children – over the head of one, under the legs of the next, and so on, down the line.
When the ball reaches the end, the last child runs to the front and starts passing it back again.
The team which goes through all its members first – so they all run from the back of the line to the front – is the winner.
A simple enough game, but it is getting these youngsters involved. And that is no small feat, because most of the children running and jumping and throwing balls in this gym are not naturally athletic types.
Grace Dean, 11, doesn’t mind admitting as much. She catches the ball and tosses it back down the line, shouting at her team mates to hurry.
Game over, she stops for a breather. “I’m not very sporty,” she says. “But this is good for getting me to do something.”
Welcome to MEND. The name stands for Mind, Exercise, Nutrition… Do it! And this programme is the city council’s latest attempt to get a generation of York children back into healthy eating and healthy exercise.
Somebody needs to. Nationally, almost 30 per cent of children are overweight, says Liz Burkinshaw, the Mend programme manager. An alarming 13 per cent of them are obese. If anything, those figures might be slightly worse in York.
Hence MEND, a ten-week programme, with two two-hour sessions each week, offered free to those who qualify. The children, aged seven to 13, and all above their ideal weight – although many of the children running and chasing balls in the gym today don’t look overweight at all – come with their parents. The first hour each evening takes the form of a fun, interactive workshop session in a classroom. The second hour is spent in the gym or the swimming pool.
The aim of that second hour is straightforward enough: to get the youngsters running, jumping and burning off energy. It may look fun, but it is a carefully controlled programme designed to gradually increase the amount of active exercise the children are doing, says Liz.
The workshop sessions aim to complement the fun and games, by teaching the children and their parents about the importance of a healthy diet.
Over the next few weeks, youngsters and their parents are learning about everything from what is in the food they eat, to the different kinds of fat and sugar – some ‘friendly’, some ‘unfriendly’. The emphasis is all on making it fun and interactive. This isn’t school work.
Today’s session is about fats and sugars. The children are given a selection of foods to analyse for their sugar and fat content, which they do in small glass jars, to the tune of plenty of laughing and joking.
At the end, course leader Ben Towler takes feedback, checking who got their sugar measurements closest.
Then he holds up a small jar full of oily yellow liquid. It’s fat, he says, and this is how much of it is in one bar of chocolate. He gives the jar a little shake. “If you can imagine drinking this…”
The reaction is everything he could have hoped for: a disgusted, instinctive “uugh!”
Donna Mardon-Mowbray, who is doing the course with her two sons, Jordan, 12, and Bailey, ten, agrees that the session has proved useful.
“It’s certainly valuable for me, because it means I’m able to read and understand the labels on food,” she says. “And it makes a real difference. I can tell my children what to eat – but if it comes from someone else, they’re more likely to listen.”
It was Jordan who persuaded his mum to do the course with him. He is quite sporty, Donna says – he does a lot of football, gym and swimming. But he is getting to the age where appearance matters, and he is determined to lose some weight. It’s not that he eats a lot, Donna says, but he does have a weakness for crisps.
Not any more, perhaps, after seeing the jar of fat Ben was waving around.
Jordan is clear about his motives. “I just wanted to lose a bit of weight,” he says. It is easy not to think about what you are eating. “But I will in future.”
The idea of the MEND programme is to take a step-by-step approach to improving children’s diet and exercise habits.
At the end of each workshop, the children are set a set a couple of targets for the next week. Nothing too difficult: small changes that will add up over time to a much healthier diet. Today’s targets are to stop eating one MEND-unfriendly sugary food and one MEND-unfriendly fatty food, and to eat two portions of fish a week.
These targets are aimed as much at parents as the children. But if the children meet them during the course of the week, they get a sticker to put up on a wall chart. And if they keep to them for the duration of the course, they get a reward of their own choosing from their parents.
The choices the children make are interesting, Liz Burkinshaw says. “It is things like ‘the T-shirt of my choice, or ‘playing board games on a Saturday night’.”
The aim is to gradually improve children’s eating habits by cutting back on fatty, sugary food, and increasing the amount of healthy food they eat.
The great thing is that the children and their parents do the work together. Grace Dean gives her mum, Tracy, strict instructions not to say anything embarrassing. But then she adds: “I like coming with my mum. It gives me confidence.”
Tracy admits that the family haven’t been eating as healthily as they could. “Then I heard about this and thought I wanted to come because it may be helpful to Grace.”
And has it been? Grace certainly thinks so.
“I feel healthier already!” she says. “We’re learning about different ways of eating, and it will definitely change the way I live. I will be eating the right amount of sugar and fruit. It’s important because otherwise I might have health problems in later life.”
• City of York Council will be running five ten-week MEND programmes this year. The next programme is due to start at Courtney’s at
Waterworld on April 20. There will be three further programmes throughout the year.
The MEND programme was devised by staff at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and the University College London Institute of Child Health.
There are now more than 400 MEND programmes across the world.
City of York Council receives funding from the Without Walls Local Area Agreement, and from Sport and Active Leisure.
Each place is worth about £400, says Liz Burkinshaw. Children attend with their parents, and up to 16 families can be accommodated on each course. The places are free, provided children satisfy the criteria.
Youngsters admitted must be above their ideal weight.
The programme is about much more than just weight loss, though, Liz says.
“MEND is a great programme that helps children and families to learn positive health habits when they are young and therefore reduce the risk of them becoming overweight or obese adults later in life,” she says.
“It is vital that all children and young people are able to lead healthy and active lives. MEND allows children who are above a healthy weight to begin to lead healthier lives through making better nutritional choices, being more physically active and developing their confidence to continue these healthy habits after completing the programme.”
Topics covered on the ten-week programme include simple games and activities, dietary information such as the difference between refined and unrefined foods, and between friendly and unfriendly fats, plus advice for parents on how to set goals and rewards to motivate their children.
There is also a ‘survival guide’ to parties and eating out, and a visit to a supermarket.
• To find out more about MEND, and see if your family would qualify for a place, contact the city council’s sport and active leisure team on 01904 553440. For those living outside York, the number to contact to find out about MEND schemes in your area is freephone 0800 2300263.
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