New Lessons in Leanness

There’s a new agenda for meetings between 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 reading and writing, parents will consider whether they need to cook with lard, traditional in Mexican cuisine.

Parents, teachers and school administrators agree that Mexican cooking, as well as American fast food and underused playgrounds, have led to increasingly sedentary, obese children. The problem is particularly severe in Orange County’s Latino community, where almost one in 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 said.

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

HealthCare Foundation Executive Director Susan G. Zepeda 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.

“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 said.

About 90% of the children at the schools that will be in the program are Latino, Spanish-speaking and live below the poverty level, according to school statistics. The schools are Roosevelt Elementary, Madison Elementary, Garfield Elementary and another yet 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 rethink her family’s diet. She said her 8-year-old daughter weighed 102 pounds and dropped to 87 after Montalvo reduced portions and increased her consumption of fruits and vegetables.

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

Rodriguez said there is no soda in the school cafeteria and that vegetables are on the lunch menu. But so are burgers, hot dogs and 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.”

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

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

Latino Health Access program will ask parents, teachers and children to come up with their own solutions, said spokeswoman Ginger Hahn.

Besides Mexican cooking, they will talk about how they can promote more physical activity in the schools while reducing or eliminating fattening fast-food carts and soda machines from the campuses, she said.