Teachers' best ideas for combating obesity can earn rewards, recognition from 'ENC-Teacher Exchange'

PARK RIDGE, Ill., Aug. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Nutrition educators and physical education teachers that have fresh ideas for helping students K thru 12 combat obesity, or have an existing program that has proven effective, are invited to share their concepts with ENC-Teacher Exchange for a chance to earn a $500 honorarium or national recognition.  

Egg Nutrition Center (ENC), science division of The American Egg Board in Park Ridge, Ill., introduced ENC-Teacher Exchange (encteacher.org) this year to spotlight the best ideas developed by teachers to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic in America.  ENC will award a $500 honorarium to a select number of teachers who submit new ideas or successful existing programs that are featured on the ENC-Teacher Exchange web site.  Separately, a handful of schools with the most innovative programs will be featured in a video story that will appear on the ENC-Teacher Exchange web site and on SchoolTube.com. 

Teachers are invited to join ENC-Teacher Exchange online at no charge to receive E-mail notification when new videos, lesson plans or other easily replicated teaching tools for combating obesity are announced.  

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported recently that two-thirds of American adults and 15 percent of children are overweight or obese; in some states, notably in the Southeastern U.S., the rate of obesity among children exceeds 30 percent.

"Obesity is probably the number one health-related issue of our time," explains Mitchell Kanter, PhD., Executive Director of Egg Nutrition Center.  "More innovative ideas are needed to combat obesity and there's no better place to search for them than with the teachers who deal with these issues every day in the classroom."

ENC recently featured Northeast Elementary in Danville, Ill., a K thru 5^th grade magnet school that was the first grade school in the nation to earn the prestigious Gold Award from the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.  ENC-Teacher Exchange featured Northeast's success story in a 9-minute video that appears on its web site: Gold School Danville.

Eggs are a 70-calorie, nutrient-rich whole food that belong in any well balanced diet, which is one reason ENC became involved in the fight against obesity.  But Kanter emphasized that Egg Nutrition Center's motives with ENC-Teacher Exchange are strictly educational. 

"We want to be part of the solution by providing educators and other health professionals with new tools they can use in the battle against obesity," Kanter explained.

All programs featured on the ENC-Teacher Exchange web site are designated "public domain," thereby ensuring free and open access to everyone. 

Nutrition educators and physical education teachers in schools K thru 12 are encouraged to submit new or existing creative ideas and teaching tools by writing to [email protected].  To join ENC-Teacher Exchange online, at no charge, and to review some of the schools that have been featured to date by ENC-Teacher Exchange, please visit www.encteacher.org. 

SOURCE Egg Nutrition Center