This Week's Healthy SC Challenge Tips

First Family Encourages Healthy Changes in Nutrition, Exercise and Tobacco Use

COLUMBIA, SC – July 24, 2009 – The Healthy SC Challenge is the Sanford family’s effort to get all South Carolinians to do just a little more to live a healthier lifestyle. The tips are designed to encourage individuals and communities to live healthier lifestyles in three categories – nutrition, exercise and help to quit smoking. The tips can also be found on the challenge’s website, www.healthysc.gov.

Healthy Tips

Nutrition
In order to move towards a healthier weight, choose nutrient-dense forms of foods. Nutrient-dense forms of foods are smart choices – they give you the nutrients you need with relatively fewer calories than other choices in the same food group

To move to a healthier weight, you need to make smart choices from every food group. Smart choices are the foods with the lowest amounts of solid fats or added sugars: for example, fat-free (skim) milk instead of whole milk and unsweetened rather than sweetened applesauce. Also, consider how the food was prepared. For example, choose skinless baked chicken instead of fried chicken and choose fresh fruit instead of a fruit pastry.

Most packaged foods have a Nutrition Facts label. Use the label to compare packaged foods and to make smart choices quickly and easily. Look at the serving size and how many servings you are actually consuming. If you eat twice the serving amount, you get twice the amount of calories, saturated fat, and added sugars on the label.

Also, check food package ingredient labels for added sugars. Names for added sugars on the ingredient label may include sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, dextrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, honey, and molasses. Fat-free cakes, cookies, and ice cream may have as much added sugar as their higher fat counterparts, and they’re often high in calories.
-United States Department of Agriculture, www.mypyramid.gov

Physical Activity
Experts recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, if not all, days of the week. This amount of physical activity may reduce your risk for some chronic diseases.

To lose weight, experts recommend that you do 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity on most days of the week. In addition, you should follow a nutritious eating plan and consume fewer calories than you burn each day. Remember that your weight may be affected by the balance of calories-in and calories-out.
In order to maintain your weight after weight loss, experts recommend that you do 60 to 90 minutes of daily moderate-intensity physical activity while continuing to eat nutritious foods that do not exceed your calorie requirements. Studies show that physical activity is very important to successful long-term weight control.

People may need to do different amounts of physical activity to lose and control weight. You may find that you need to do more, or that you may not need to do as much. Also, remember that your eating plan and the number of calories you eat are important. You may wish to speak with your health care provider, a fitness specialist, or a dietitian about the right amount of activity and calories for you.
-Weight-Control Information Network, www.win.niddk.nih.gov

Tobacco
So, despite your best intentions you haven’t been able to quit smoking since you had your children. Parenthood comes with lots of responsibilities and one of them is always putting the health and safety of your kids first. If you must smoke, take it outside.
Two of the worst places you can smoke in front of your child is in your home and automobile. Both are enclosed spaces that put your child in a much closer vicinity to your secondhand smoke.

* Thirty-eight percent of children aged two months to five years are exposed to secondhand smoke in the home
* In South Carolina, 240,000 kids breathe in secondhand smoke at home

It’s a cold December morning and there’s frost on your windshield. You strap your toddler in his car seat and scrape the ice off the windshield. By the time you get in, you’re freezing and dying for a cigarette. You roll the window down a half an inch, figuring that should allow most of the smoke to disseminate into the air as you drive to the daycare.

Or maybe you come home from work exhausted from a long day and you want a smoke. You may even open some of the windows, but the same smoke that has turned your furniture, walls and drapes and dingy shade of gray is working its way into your small child’s lungs. The first signs of it might be ear infections or bronchial infections but pretty soon your daughter’s developed asthma.

* Children of smokers are more likely to suffer from upper respiratory infections, bronchitis and pneumonia each year
* Children of smokers have more ear infections, hearing problems and asthma than children of nonsmokers
* Children of smokers are more likely to die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

By the age of five, the children of smokers have inhaled the equivalent of 102 packs of cigarettes. You wouldn’t let them light up their own, right? So, why should they smoke yours?

* Infants whose mothers smoke are almost four times as likely to be hospitalized
* Children who live in households where three or more packs of cigarettes are smoked per day are more than four times as likely to need ear tubes placed to prevent frequent ear infections
* Infants with two parents who smoke are more than twice as likely to have had pneumonia or bronchitis

If you decide to smoke, always smoke out of doors away from the entrances of your home and never in your automobile, especially when you’re carrying passengers.
–South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, www.scdhec.org

The Healthy SC Challenge

The Healthy SC Challenge is an outcome-based, cooperative effort aimed at encouraging individuals, communities and organizations across the state to show shared responsibility in developing innovative ways to improve the health of South Carolina’s citizens. For more information about the Healthy SC Challenge, please visit www.healthysc.gov, or call 803-737-4772.