A leading state lawmaker wants schools to push healthier foods and lifestyles on students, and the Indiana Department of Education plans to back his legislation targeting childhood obesity. "The bill is definitely headed in the right direction," said Terry Spradlin, the department's legislative liaison.

The proposal by Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, would require schools to adopt policies and lesson plans emphasizing nutrition and provide daily physical activity for students in kindergarten through eighth-grades.
The policies must focus on helping students control excessive weight, avoid unsafe weight-loss practices and develop healthy eating habits.

At least 50 percent of foods sold in vending machines at schools would have to qualify as "healthy" under federal guidelines, and those that are not could not be sold when schools are serving meals. The Department of Education would develop recommendations to help schools determine nutritional content of school meals and nutrition curriculum, and in consultation with state health officials, policies for measuring the body
mass index of students. 

Although the bill has been assigned to the House Education Committee, Brown hopes it will be reassigned to the House Health Committee he chairs when lawmakers convene early next month. If it is, he said he will devote one or two full hearings to that bill alone. "That says it is my number one legislative agenda," said Brown. "Not one week goes by where you don't read the newspaper or watch television with something being said about obesity and its negative impact."

Indeed, the U.S. Surgeon General has called obesity an epidemic. According to recent health studies, the number of obese adults in the United States is soaring, up to nearly 59 million people, almost a third of all adults. The number has doubled over the past two decades. Fifteen percent of youths ages 6 to 19 were seriously overweight, the term experts use as a rough equivalent to obesity in children. That is nearly 9 million youths and triple the number in a similar assessment from 1980.

Obesity can sharply reduce life expectancy. Studies released this year showed that being obese at age 20 can take 20 years off a person's life; being obese at age 40 can reduce life expectancy by seven years. Brown said the state and its public schools must do more to combat the problem. Parents should take the leading role, he said, but often times they do not.

Although Brown's bill would require daily physical activity for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, it would not mandate it be provided during a class. It could be incorporated into recess. Illinois is the only state that requires daily physical education classes.

In 2002, only 2 percent of Indiana's elementary students had P.E. classes more than two days per week. High school students in Indiana typically take one semester of physical education, all that is required by law. Brown introduced a bill last year that would restrict certain foods from being sold in vending machines at schools. It failed to pass, in part because some school districts that have contracts with soft-drink makers to sell their products opposed it. 

Brown's bill this year is more comprehensive. But Spradlin, the lobbyist for the Department of Education, said it still leaves much flexibility with school districts. "There are some groups that would like to define physical activity very tightly, but we wouldn't be in favor of a very restrictive definition," Spradlin said. "We don't want to create unnecessary burdens or mandates on them that are unreasonable."

David Dickson, a member of the State Board of Education and a former superintendent of Hammond Public Schools, said lawmakers should consider all possible fiscal impacts the bill might have before advancing it.
"We all know that school corporations are strapped for cash, their backs against the wall, having to cut education programs," Dickson said. "I wouldn't want to sacrifice education programs for physical education.

"There are only so many hours in the day," he said. "Every time you punch something into the curriculum you have to pull something out. We need to look at this as a whole."