Horne: Kids to know diet, exercise matter

State schools Superintendent Tom Horne is convinced that most teens don't know why fruit is better for you than french fries and why vigorous exercise is healthier than video games.

So he wants schools to teach it.

Horne on Friday unveiled proposed standards for health and physical education at Arizona schools.

These standards won't actually require that students be physically active. In fact, Horne has lost the fight to mandate exercise - and even just a recess period - at the Legislature.

So Horne, a self-professed health nut, is trying the next best thing: have teachers prepare lesson plans explaining to students why they should be making healthier choices.

"If I could require them to be physically active, I would," he said. "In the meantime, we have to give them a good attitude toward it."

Horne said he's convinced that schoolchildren really don't know what's healthy to eat and what is not.

His proof?

"Every time some chain has a health food that I gravitate to, it ends up getting discontinued because it doesn't get used enough," he said. "I end up being the only customer."

That presumes teens would eat better if they knew better. More to the point, it presumes the average youngster doesn't know that an apple is healthier than fries.

Horne said education will help.

"You need to know the reasons," Horne said. "You need to know what the junk food does to you, you need to know what being sedentary does to you, you need to know why eating green vegetables is good for you."

And Horne said he believes that with knowledge will come a change in behavior.

"Why would people eat so much junk food if they knew how bad it was?" he asked.

Because it tastes good?

"But if you knew how bad it is, you avoid it like the plague," he responded. And Horne said he is living proof.

Horne said he never was a junk-food addict. "But I never ate vegetables," he said. And his diet also had things like cheese.

A blood test showing high cholesterol, coupled with weight gain, convinced him to change his diet. Since 2006, he's dropped 20 pounds, though Horne, 250 pounds at age 64, figures he could be 20 pounds lighter than that.

"I learned," he said. "And now I eat vegetables all the time."

But will kids listen?

Horne conceded they may need a little help sticking to a healthier diet. That is why he and Mark Anderson, then a state lawmaker from Mesa, helped push through a ban in 2005 on the sale of junk food, at least in elementary, middle and junior high schools.

Opposition, both from companies that have vending machines and school booster groups that make money from them, doomed a similar ban at the high school level. Horne said, though, some districts have imposed their own standards.

Some of what Horne hopes to teach students about avoiding things like chocolate bars may require a more aggressive approach, perhaps along the lines of the anti-tobacco campaigns showing diseased lungs.

"You know, milk fat is the worst," he said. "It coagulates in your arteries at room temperature."

Nutrition is only part of the focus. The rules Horne is pushing also would have teachers instruct their students on the benefits of physical activity.

Subjects would be age appropriate.

For example, youngsters in kindergarten through second grade would be asked to identify several physical activities that are enjoyable.

Those in grades sixth through eighth would be encouraged to engage in physical activity for personal, social or health benefits. And older students would be asked to examine the role that motivation, prioritizing, dedication and self-discipline play in fitness development.

But the standards, which are subject to approval by the state Board of Education, don't actually require any school to mandate - or even offer - physical activity.

The closest lawmakers came was last year when both the House and Senate adopted legislation requiring schools to provide 30 minutes of unstructured recess in grades one through six in addition to the minimum 20 minutes that students now get for lunch. But the measure got hung up over different versions and never became law.

Horne has scheduled several public hearings on the standards for next month. He said the board likely would consider it later this fall, with an eye on implementing the standards next school year.

Even with state board action, Horne can't force schools to actually teach health, as there is no requirement in statute or regulation. The only thing the rules would do is spell out that schools that do teach health would have to use these standards.