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Treat ... or trick?

Fair scares away unhealthy choices

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Is a healthy Halloween possible? Margene Asay believes it is, and as last Thursday’s kids' health fair in St. Ignatius proved, learning about healthy living can be just as fun — and spooky — as trick-or-treating.

Asay, a Tribal Health educator, organized the fair to target kids in third through fifth grades and their families.

“We just want to have kids be aware of what health is about,” she said. “I think it’s important that the parents come and be a part of this … You’re never too old to learn.”

And October is the perfect month to teach kids about nutrition before they are inundated with loads of candy, as Tribal Health diabetes specialist Nancy Grant explained. Her station, one of about 20 on a “yellow brick road” through the Halloween-themed fair, featured a variety of sodas and sugary drinks and asked kids to guess how much sugar is in their favorite drinks. Grant explained to students how to read nutrition labels, and most were surprised to learn that sodas aren’t the only unhealthy drinks.

“They think they’re OK to drink apple juice, but it has a lot of sugar,” Grant said.

Teaching kids about good nutrition can help prevent type II diabetes, which is on the rise in Native populations, Grant said. There are more than 700 diabetics registered with Tribal Health on the Flathead Reservation, and the youngest is 15.

“And that’s just what we know about,” she said. “It’s kind of a scary thought.”

Part of the problem with growing unhealthiness in children is that “science takes a big back seat, and health takes an even bigger back seat,” in school curriculums, said Lisa Woods of the University of Montana’s spectrUM Discovery Area, a museum-like science center geared toward children. 

SpectrUM exhibits rotate out every six months and then go on the road, traveling around the state to events like the kids health fair. Woods and her team brought a “Hands on Health” exhibit with several interactive stations where kids could look at their hands under a blacklight before and after washing them, pick “boogers” out of a giant nose and examine the material under a microscope, and piece together a human skeleton puzzle made of X-rays. 

Kicking Horse Job Corps students also tested kids’ blood sugar, blood pressure and triglyceride levels and gave free flu shots. Grant said 133 kids had their blood sugars screened during the fair — a good first step to helping them stay healthy.

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