The Physical Educator’s Role in Enacting the Mandated School Wellness Policy

Abstract

“N ew federal regulations celebrated in schools.” While a more unlikely headline might be hard to imagine, school physical educators should be delighted with the recently mandated school wellness policies. For the physical education profession, these policies offer new ways of improving student health. The root causes of such health threats as obesity and inactivity are clearly identifi ed: students are eating too much of the wrong kinds of food and moving too little. Unfortunately, effective strategies for solving these problems are harder to identify. Access to healthy foods in public schools is critical. Schools provide most of the total daily dietary intake of food and nutrients for many children (Gleason & Suitor, 2003). Because the vast majority of children in the United States spend most of their day in public schools, teachers can certainly infl uence students’ eating habits. What children learn about nutrition in schools almost certainly plays a role in their food choices outside of school, and these choices will affect both the quality and length of their future life (Olshansky et al., 2005). Efforts to promote healthy and active lifestyles will not succeed without changing students’ diets. The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 may prove to be a signifi cant catalyst both for improving children’s health and for rethinking the role of the public school physical education teacher. In this article we will examine some of the nutritional issues that physical educators should consider addressing.