Activ-eat

Activ-eat is a health education programme for children aged six to nine years of age, which encourages children to eat a healthy balanced diet and lead healthier lifestyles.

The programme is delivered by Bupa volunteers to schools across the UK and activities include children tasting different fruits from around the world, making healthy smoothies and playing fun games which highlight the importance of eating five fruit and veg a day. The children are also encouraged to increase their physical activities with the use of pedometers, which are given to each child at the end of each session.

The healthy messages are encouraged to continue following the session via the Activ-eat three week challenge, which is left with the school. The challenge is that each week the children have to mark the Activ-eat calendar as to whether they have managed to walk 40,000 steps and eat their five a day. At the end of the challenge the winning children will receive a prize from Bupa.

The Bupa Community Connections team have also worked with the Bupa medical team to create a series of informative booklets for the children to take home, informing parents on dietary advice for children. As well as this, Community Connections have created an affiliation with the Government’s Healthy Schools initiative to ensure that we are up to date with any Government obesity research or new recommendations in the area.

Activ-eat Targets - Nov 2008- June 2009

• Bupa plans to deliver the Activ-eat program to 3,240 children across 27 schools across the UK.
• We aim for each child to take part in the three week challenge, so that the five-a-day message is reinforced, affecting 48,600 lunch breaks.
• We plan to deliver healthy eating information booklets to over 6,000 parents four times a year, spreading the healthy messages into the wider communities. This will mean the distribution of 12,960 books by June 2009.
• We aim that through the participation of the program the children will be 80% more likely to make healthy food choices and apply such knowledge to choices in the future. This research will be gathered via pre and post questionnaires for pupils and teachers.