4 Schools to Help Parents Teach Lessons in Leanness

There’s a new agenda for meetings among some Santa Ana parents and teachers: how to get lard out of the enchiladas, beans and tacos.

The discussions at four elementary schools in predominantly Latino areas will make the parents part of a national campaign to reduce obesity in children.

Besides talking to teachers and administrators about writing and reading, parents will work on chiles rellenos. They’ll consider whether they need to use lard, traditionally used in Mexican cuisine.

Parents, teachers and school administrators agree that Mexican cooking, as well as American fast food, have contributed to increasingly obese children, kids who are using playgrounds less and leading ever-more-sedentary lives. The problem is particularly fierce in Orange County’s Latino community, where almost one in every four low-income adolescents is obese.

“It’s the lard, the darn lard,” said Alejandra Bernal, a 31-year-old mother of three, one of whom is overweight. Bernal, whose children attend Roosevelt Elementary School in Santa Ana, came from Guerrero, Mexico, four years ago and regularly cooks typical Mexican dishes. “I’ll try [to cook without the lard], but the food will never taste the same.”

Mexican immigrant mothers say their traditional cooking includes frying onions, tomatoes and meat to make most dishes. Oven cooking is rare, they say.

With help from a recent $169,000 grant from the HealthCare Foundation for Orange County, Latino Health Access and Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach will begin a program in March that will address home cooking, as well as fast food, soda and exercise.

Susan G. Zepeda, executive director of HealthCare Foundation for O.C., chose to fund an obesity campaign after seeing alarming statistics: 24.5% of Latino children in Orange County ages 10 to 12 are obese, compared with 14.6% of all low-income children in the county and 14.1% of low-income children in the state. The figures are from Dawn Robinson, a county nutritionist.

“Our mission . . . is to increase health status and access to care,” Zepeda said. “Because weight gains put children at risk for all kinds of disease . . . we want to work on it.”

Vending machines in cafeterias “have made children feel that [soft drinks are] better than milk, and pizza and French fries must be good because they serve them at my school,” she added.

About 90% of the children at the schools chosen for the program are Latino, Spanish-speaking and live below the poverty level, according to school statistics. The schools involved are Roosevelt Elementary, Madison Elementary, Garfield Elementary and another to be chosen.

Like Bernal, other parents say they’re willing to change their ways, but they admit it’s going to be an uphill battle against age-old culinary traditions.

Petra Durate, whose family often has soups and fresh fruit juice for dinner, agreed: “It would be good to try, but it will never be the same. It’s the lard that gives the dishes flavor.”

Maria Montalvo, a mother of two who already has trimmed some fat in her kitchen, said parents will be skeptical but may be worried enough--and busy enough--to accept new recipes to make quick, healthful meals.

“We are all looking for easy solutions. We all work. We all have kids. If there is something we can throw in the oven, that would be great.”

Montalvo lost 40 pounds after experiencing liver problems, and that forced her to look at her family’s diet too. She said her 8-year-old daughter weighed 102 pounds and dropped to 87 pounds after Montalvo reduced portions and increased her family’s consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Roosevelt Principal Nadine Rodriguez said too many children at her school are obese. “You can see the pattern they are establishing,” she said. “Once they get heavy, it’s rare that they lose the weight.”

Rodriguez said that there is no soda in the school cafeteria and that vegetables are on the lunch menu. But so are burgers, hot dogs and Taco Bell burritos. That could change.

“It’s not going to be an easy thing, but we have to start somewhere,” she said. “This isn’t a Mexican or Hispanic problem. It’s a community problem.”

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Like others, Rodriguez said that too many children live in cramped apartments where they have few opportunities to get involved in physical activities.

Teachers said that too often, their students are offered unlimited quantities of soda, chips and sweets at home.

Parents, teachers and children will be asked to come up with their own solutions as part of the Latino Health Access program, said spokeswoman Ginger Hahn. Hoag will provide meeting space and experts to talk with the parents, Hahn said.

The focus of the talks, in addition to Mexican cooking, will be on how to promote more physical activity in the schools while reducing or eliminating fast-food carts and soda machines from the campuses, Hahn said.

Latino Health Access health workers, or promotoras, will talk with parents about how they can practice healthful cooking.

County nutritionist Robinson said the program shows how obesity is now recognized as a public-health problem.

“It’s a growing problem and more people are finally recognizing it. To fix it, it will take a lot of resources. Physical activity must be part of the solution. The parents have to be part of it,” she said.

Robinson said not all Mexican cooking is unhealthful, pointing to fruit shakes and drinks common at Mexican meals and the generous use of vegetables and salsa, a low-fat topping.

“Every ethnicity has things with the cultural cooking that can be improved. There are also good things [in Mexican meals], and hopefully, that can be shown to the parents,” Robinson said.