City Of Murfreesboro Tn

TN starts young in weight battle

The vending machines at DuPont Hadley Middle School stock only bottled water, even though eliminating high-sugar drinks cost the Old Hickory school about $1,000 per year in sales.

On a recent morning here, students attacked their gym class workouts with vigor. And at lunch, at a table of five, not a single student picked junk food — one bought a pre-made chef salad and two others an entrée of cubed turkey in a low-fat cheese sauce. All chose a fruit or vegetable.

A banner in the cafeteria thunders: “EAT WELL! THINK WELL! MOVE WELL!”

But in other corners of this school, which has won national awards for its health programs, the wellness utopia showed signs of strain.

At one table, students eagerly stuffed themselves with greasy delivery pizza — the reward for a reading program. Two boys pulled a wagon full of chips and candy down the hall — leftovers from an end-of-year party. An overweight parent plied her daughter and two other girls with bags from a fast-food drive-thru.

Schools have become the front line in Tennessee’s battle with overweight kids, where good information and bad habits often collide. State policymakers have put millions of dollars toward health programs in schools and say a decline in teen obesity rates is proof the programs are starting to work.

Tennessee has the nation’s sixth-highest childhood obesity rate, which bodes poorly for its already overweight adult population. Taxpayers spend $1.6 billion or more annually on medical care for obesity-related health conditions, including diabetes, hypertension and cancer. Researchers predict that financial burden will increase to $2.8 billion in 2013 and $7.1 billion by 2018.

With the idea that obesity projections could be best reversed by addressing today’s children, state health leaders embarked on a plan five years ago in which it pays a full-time health coordinator in every school district to help students maintain a healthy weight. The program costs $15 million annually, and the coordinators have won about another $15 million in grant money each year.

At the same time, a 500-member Tennessee Obesity Task Force creates and lobbies for policies that mostly affect children’s health, such as taxing sugary drinks and making it safer to walk to school.

The early results are positive, say Centers for Disease Control and Prevention administrators, who tell other states to look at Tennessee when writing their own anti-obesity plans. A CDC survey showed the number of obese high school students fell from 16.9 percent to 15.8 percent from 2008 to 2009, but it will take years of falling numbers to claim victory as the first state to reverse its childhood obesity rate long term.

US / THEM: Zorch: Austin hyper-kinetic duo premiere new track via ...

Zorch 's exceptionally precise and inventive songs often invite comparisons to a wildly different composite of energetic artists such as Lightning Bolt , Dan Deacon, HEALTH , Adebisi Shank and Battles all the way to more psychedelic/pop acts like Flaming Lips , Animal Collective and F*ck Buttons . However, it seems that everyone hears something uniquely new and exciting in their songs. Stream and/or download their full Zorch is an experimental/noise rock duo from Austin, TX. Composed of Zac Traeger (keyboards, omnichord, vocals) and Shmu (drums, omnichord, vocals), the two hail from Wisconsin and Canada respectively. The duo met in Boston and began recording dozens of improvisational mixtapes, which, after moving to Austin in 2009, would help lay the foundation for Zorch. Since that pivotal move, they've quickly made a home for themselves in the city's illustrious avant-garde DIY scene, building a reputation on their deafening live shows and fan interaction. In July of 2009, Zorch recorded their self-titled 4-track EP at Cacophony Studios in Austin, TX. It's the duo's first attempt to capture their sound and demonstrate their wide palette of musical colors, ranging from tribal to pop. Choosing to self-release the EP and offering it up as a free download through their website, Zorch also gives fans the opportunity to design and create their own CD cases at live shows. Disregarding notions of intellectual property, they post the stems to all their songs online as well, ready to be mixed and morphed to each listener's content.

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