B.C. schools’ new health program doesn’t tie kids to misperceptions about food.

More than one quarter of Canadian children and adolescents aged two to 17 are overweight or obese, according to a 2004 study done for Statistics Canada. In an effort to combat the rise of obesity, the B.C. government has rolled out programs such as Act Now B.C. and Action Schools! B.C. to stem the tide and teach the value of healthy food choices and physical activity to children.

What the government doesn’t know is that programs focusing solely on healthy eating and obesity prevention can cause more problems than they solve—and have potentially deadly results.

Just ask Alison Ensworth. Her life changed forever after a Grade 9 class project in her North Vancouver school where students were told to track their meals for a week and count up the calories. Afterward, the class discussed the difference between “good” and “bad” food choices. Most students soon forgot the lesson. But Ensworth didn’t.

A year-and-a-half later, Ensworth entered treatment for anorexia. Her hair was falling out; she came near to fainting every time she stood; and her heart had rotated closer to her organs, in an effort to save energy. In the weeks leading up to hospitalization, her father would sit by her bed at night, ready to jump in if she stopped breathing.

Still, Ensworth actually thought she was getting healthier.

“I was still convinced that I just wanted to be healthy,” she says today in a phone interview from her North Vancouver home, four years after her first hospitalization. “I was taking care of myself in the best way I knew how.”

After that Grade 9 class, Ensworth began to restrict her eating. “I just gradually cut out one thing after another,” she says. “Junk food, fat”¦It became something I could really focus on and a way to distract myself from other stressors. If I was having a bad day, I was like, ”˜Oh, I’m having a bad day, but at least I’m taking good care of myself and eating what I should be eating.’ ”

Ensworth doesn’t think the class caused her eating disorder, but she does think it helped trigger what scientists believe is a mix of societal, cultural, and genetic factors that contribute to an illness with the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder.

“School made it easy by pointing out, ”˜Okay, this is a good food; this is a bad food,’ ” she says. “It’s like they’re handing us the tools to become obsessive.”

Ensworth is not alone in her thinking. A U.K. study released in 2004 titled Disordered Eating and Disordered Schooling: What Schools Do to Middle Class Girls, argues that an increased focus on “healthism” in schools aimed at making young people “more active, ”˜fit’, and thin” can intersect with media influences to create a culture in which eating is not a pleasurable experience but a process heavy with “guilt” and “sin”.

“In essence, one has to learn to become anorectic,” the study states. “The message these young women are hearing is that they are to take control of their health by making ”˜healthy choices’, particularly in relation to diet.”

“I feel very strongly that any obesity-prevention program’s focus needs to include a component of self-esteem awareness and feeling good about yourself,” says Sue Stock, an eating-disorders physician and a cofounder of Healthy Buddies, a B.C. Children’s Hospital health-promotion program for B.C. elementary schools. “No food is bad; it’s just that certain foods are better more in moderation than others.”

Healthy Buddies is unique among healthy-living programs in that it addresses not just obesity but also eating disorders. In the program, intermediate-grade students are paired with primary-grade “buddies”. The older students are taught about nutrition, physical activity, and healthy self-esteem; they then share their knowledge with their younger buddies, with the aim of promoting health that is more than skin deep.

“I think of disordered eating as a spectrum,” Stock says. “On one end, it’s overeating and not being healthy with your body. On the other end, it’s anorexia. Then there’s this whole zone in between with people who are dieting, binging, skipping meals, and just not feeling good about themselves.”

Between 2006 and 2008, 46 elementary schools across B.C. participated in the Healthy Buddies program.

“What I will remember most from Healthy Buddies is your body is the right size and shape for you as long as you move vigorously and eat healthy foods,” Emily, a Grade 7 student from West Sechelt elementary, the program’s pilot school, wrote in a program review for the hospital. Results show that students involved in the program demonstrate not only improved health knowledge and behaviours but also higher self-esteem and increased social responsibility.

As for Ensworth, she’s now advocating for change as a guest speaker at several North Shore schools.

“If you have someone who’s actually experienced it [an eating disorder] and they can tell you the actual gruesome facts and details, it makes such a huge difference,” she says. “It might seem glamorous, but it’s really the most regrettable thing I’ve ever done.”