A new study has suggested that about half of all elementary school students can buy potato chips, ice cream, or similar snacks in vending machines and at snack bars during school.

Elementary school “is really a crucial period where the preferences and behavioral habits are being developed,” said Lindsey Turner, one of the study’s authors from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“If kids are early on in that environment where that junk food is around, then it potentially becomes a habit that’s harder to break,” she told Reuters Health, adding that the new finding was “disappointing.”

“The community (and) the parents have to take a lot of responsibility as well,” Dr. Y. Claire Wang, who studies childhood nutrition and obesity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York, said.

According to an international study, children who get more exercise also tend to do better in school.

The findings come as schools in the United States, in general, cut physical activity time in favor of more academic test preparation.

Amika Singh, who worked on the study, said, “Maybe it’s an activity break, stand up every half an hour in class and do something,” said Singh, from VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam.

“It might mean going to school by bike … Any kind of physical activity you can think of. It doesn’t mean only the physical education standard class.”

The findings were published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

An Arizona mother who lost her three children and her ex-husband in a plane crash in the Superstition Mountains has been lent with support of friends and acquaintances.

Karen Perry, of Apache Junction, Ariz., has experienced a series of struggles in recent years and her two children were suffering from health complications (epilepsy and autism).

From news.yahoo.com:

“They were just great kids,” Mark Blomgren, principal at the school in Apache Junction where the two oldest children attended, told the Arizona Republic. “All the teachers were naturally shocked. They cared about them and wondered how their mom was doing and they were just hit pretty hard. Logan and Morgan were just special kids that the teachers really bonded with.”

Crews continued working Friday in the crags and outcroppings of the mountaintop area just east of Phoenix to finish recovering the remains of the six people aboard, Pinal County sheriff’s spokesman Elias Johnson told The Associated Press. The dead included Perry’s ex-husband, Shawn Perry, 39, who was the pilot.

“No one could have survived that crash,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said.

Children need to start school ready to learn, need encouraging role models, and build blocks to help them through to graduation for attaining success in school and life.

Plans for establishing new targets on waiting times and treatment in the Lothians have been scrapped by health chiefs after admitting that they would not be able to meet it without extra funding.

The locally-established targets included persuading more people to quit smoking, reducing heart-related deaths, and improving waiting times across a variety of fields.

From News.scotsman.com:

Labour’s health spokeswoman in Edinburgh, Councillor Lesley Hinds, said: “In the end it can actually cost more money because if people’s health gets worse, that will be more expensive to treat in the long run.”

TOOTH DECAY FIGURES RAISE A SMILE

RECORD numbers of Scots schoolchildren are free from dental decay, new figures revealed today.

A report on children’s dental health showed the Scottish Government has surpassed the target of having 60 per cent of primary seven pupils without any obvious sign of tooth decay.

Across the country, 64 per cent of youngsters leaving primary school were found to have healthy teeth.

Five years ago, the figure was just 52.9 per cent.

Minister for public health Shona Robison announced the findings and said: “Dental health in Scotland is improving and this is a trend that we want to continue.”

Labour’s health spokeswoman in Edinburgh, Councillor Lesley Hinds, said expenses will be more in the long run if health of people gets worse.