Mother & Child Health Coalition

Helping every mother and child in the Kansas City area to be healthy

PROGRAMS

For materials from the recent Jump Start Conference, click here.

For 10 year olds in Kansas City, really big food is normal. Since they’ve been old enough to watch TV or eat fast food they’ve been exposed to images of giant burgers, bagels, expanding candy bars, monster-sized tubs of popcorn and sodas large enough to splash in.

And boy, does it show.  Our kids are fatter than ever.  A combination of lower activity levels, harried lifestyles, access to quick, inexpensive food and out-of-control portion sizes is adding up to more type II diabetes in young people, in addition to a host of other ailments. In fact, if eating styles don’t change, health experts warn that for the first time, this generation of young people may have shorter life spans than their parents.

MCHC’s Weighing In coalition, funded by the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, has designed a campaign that delivers portion control messages to tweens. Why tweens? Young people between the ages of 8 and 12 are starting to make their own decisions about the kinds of food they eat and more importantly, they can still be influenced.

The Eat Small campaign is a mix of key messages and a little attitude. It teaches tweens how to exercise portion control, especially when they are tempted by SUPERSIZED portions in restaurants or even when they eat with their family or friends at home. When the bag of potato chips comes their way, how do tweens know what’s a reasonable portion? 

“Eat Small” will show them.  Through a mix of media messages and an educational campaign, key messages such as “Don’t Supersize Me!” and  “Supersizing Isn’t Cool. Smaller, Healthy Portions Rule” will be disseminated throughout the community with a launch planned for late August. Televisions spots produced by campaign partner KCPT will be aired on KCPT, local network stations and cable.  Radio, billboards and movie screens will also display the slogans and graphics of the campaign.  “Tool kits” for teachers, school nurses, and community program leaders will be distributed through area schools and community partners. These “tool kits” of resources, creative lesson ideas, posters, refrigerator magnets and parent tips will be offered at no cost while supplies last.

On this Webpage, you will find downloadable materials for use in your school or community organization.  You may use them freely, giving credit to the Eat Small campaign and Mother and Child Health Coalition.

Useful Materials:

Tool Kit

BigDeal

Big Deal in Spanish

Recipes

Parent Tips

Parent Tips in Spanish
Resources

The following materials are from the www.mypyramid.gov web site, and they contain reproducible worksheets for the classroom, such as What's on the Label? and What's the Score? and many more.

mpk1_lesson1.pdf
mpk3_lesson2.pdf
mpk3_lesson3.pdf

The following pages have been adapted from documents created by NC SNAC in 2003. They can be found in the original form at this web site: www.fns.usda.gov.

Choosing Sensible Portions
Just Say No to Supersize
Portion Sizes in Classroom
Portion Sizes in Hand

Below are the Eat Small campaign posters, in English and Spanish:

Poster in English: supersize8sheet001.jpg
Poster in Spanish: superagrandes8sheet001.jpg

Partner organizations' links:

www.mypyramid.gov

www.kchealthykids.org

http://extension.missouri.edu/

www.americanheart.org/heartpower

www.actionforhealthykids.org

For more information, contact Julie Barry at jbarry@mchc.net

For a listing of resources on CHILDHOOD OBESITY
in the Kansas City area, click here.

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MCHCGKC is the consortium for Kansas City Healthy Start

6400 Prospect Ave., Suite 216, Kansas City, MO 64132

                                                  Phone (816) 283-6242     Fax (816) 283-0307