Your TV screen might offer a home-field advantage when it comes to enjoying the big game, but did you know that most kids would rather play sports than watch them on television? That's what 80 percent of children ages 6 to 18 said in a recent survey.

The lesson: Be sure to make outdoor time readily available for young sports fans and/or offer them a chance to join a team or league. Other results from the survey revealed these interesting athletic nuggets:

• Among 6- to 9-year olds, 43 percent said they play their sport "because they love it," versus 32 percent of the 13- to 18-year olds.
• Ten percent of 13- to 18-year-old girls quit playing sports after being told they weren't good enough by a coach.
• Girls attend practice in greater number than boys.
• Nearly 50 percent of the kids said their parents urge them to play a team sport.

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Maggie recently shared celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is helping to overhaul the UK's school nutrition program with healthier choices. They need a slew of chefs tying on aprons for the cause -- 23 percent of British children are overweight or obese.

British school officials are now instituting a new tactic. Starting in September, UK schools will begin weighing kindergarteners and students in their last year of primary school, and sending a letter home to parents with results. To avoid stigma, skinny and fat kids alike will receive a letter. To avoid hurt feelings, the terms "obese" or "fat" will not be used, replaced by "overweight" or "very overweight" instead. The British National Obesity Forum labeled this move "prissy and namby-pamby."

The British health minister says with so many children overweight or obese, many parents are having trouble determining if their own child is too heavy, and the letters are an early-warning system to prevent later health problems. I embrace healthier school nutrition programs, but will a new Big Brother -- the public school system -- honestly change eating and fitness behaviors of schoolchildren?

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As a mom, I work pretty hard (like all of you) to make sure that my kids not only eat a healthy diet, but that they learn how to make good choices about what they put in their mouth. Though my three-year-old still needs a little convincing, my five-year-old is really starting to get the picture. She tries new foods at meal times, knows the difference between "sometimes" foods and "all the time" foods, and looks forward to "treats" like fresh cucumbers from the garden or green peppers dipped in hummus.

After a busy day running errands last week, however, she really showed me that all the focus on nutrition was paying off. It was a grueling day of doctor appointments and car repair, and it was long past when they should have had an afternoon snack. I resorted to the bad behavior of bribing to get my cranky kids through, promising a trip to the ice cream store on the way home.

After our last errand, we passed the farmer's market and decided to stop. We picked up fresh, local cherries, raspberries, and melon to chop up into a fruit salad for dinner. After we all got loaded in the car, my daughter told me, "Mom, you don't need to get us ice cream now. We just want to eat those raspberries. Is that ok?"

Is that ok? I assured her that, yes, that was a great idea. We drove home, ate all of the raspberries before they could be put into the salad, and marveled at how, sometimes, our kids have so much to teach us.

Your medical history, that is. If you (or your spouse) has a strong family history of cardiovascular disease, you (or your spouse), too, could be at risk, and you could be passing that risk on to your kids. Therefore, it's important to make your internist and your pediatrician aware of any incidence of heart disease in primary relatives -- parents, siblings, and grandparents.

Your family doctor probably has taken a detailed medical history, but your child's doctor might not have. So don't hesitate to bring up the subject with your pediatrician at the earliest possible opportunity.

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Think about when you were a teen (assuming that you're not one now). Think about what your day was like as you woke up for school, frantically headed to either catch the bus or bum a ride off of your one friend who had a car. Granted, that car looked like something Fred Sanford should have been driving, but it was still a car. Anyway, as I was saying, remember how tough it sometimes was to make the 8am bell for school. You would rush, rush, rush -- only to then barely make it to homeroom before the teacher marked you absent. Whew ... that was close.

Then, at around 9:20 or so, something started to happen. You seemed to be working on a two-to-three second delay, you were inattentive -- but not really on purpose, and your early rising from bed finally began to take its toll. If you were like most teenagers (especially today), you probably felt this way because you skipped breakfast.

Worst of all, in efforts to stop your stomach from making that embarrassing moaning sound (the one that can only mean one of two things: 1 - You're hungry, or 2 - You have to go the bathroom and you're holding it with all your might. Of course the people around you who hear it always assume that it's number two -- no pun intended), you grabbed a candy bar or bag of potato chips from the vending machine, or maybe even some tater tots from the cafeteria.

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Does your child eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables? Are your kids physically active? Do they have a pet they're responsible for? These are just a few of the questions I was asked when I took the RealAge Healthy Kids Test. RealAge -- it's not just for grownups any more.

If you're honest with this test, it'll spit out some good information when you're done. For instance, it'll list all of the good habits you're instilling in your children and then it will also tell you how much the bad habits you're ignoring will age your child by the time she's in her 30s. Better yet, RealAge will help you give you some tips to help you refine those trouble spots and improve your child's health.

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We had over 30 adults and kids over yesterday for a chili potluck. Figuring most kids would hate the low-fat three bean/portabello chili, I also prepared a batch of homemade chicken nuggets. I held back from the easy solution -- heating up a bunch of frozen, processed chicken dinosaurs.

Every last chicken nugget was eaten. Parents felt good serving them, and many tossed a couple on their plate, too. Here's the recipe from the Pillsbury Complete Cookbook. Healthy tip: I only dip half the nugget in butter, cutting the cited 10 grams of fat per serving in about half, to a healthier five grams. Plenty of crushed corn flakes adhere just fine to the chicken if you choose to use less butter.

Double-Dipped Chicken Nuggets

1/4 cup all-purpose flour mixed with 1/2 tsp seasoned salt

1 cup finely crushed corn flakes

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 1" pieces

1/4 cup butter or margerine

Rinse, cube chicken. Mix flour/salt in plastic bag, toss in chicken and shake to coat. Dip floured chicken in butter, coat with crushed cereal. I just hand dip the buttered chicken in a bowl of crushed corn flakes, but you can also shake to coat them in plastic bag, if you're a Shake 'n Baker.

Place nuggets in ungreased, shallow baking pan at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until no longer pink inside. Nutritional info: 1/6th of recipe sports 230 calories, 5 grams of fat (if you half-dip in butter), about 16 g carbs and 19 grams of protein. Compare this to McDonald's Chicken McNuggets (6 pieces): 250 calories, 15 g of fat!, 15 g carbs and 15 g protein. No doubt, it was worth the extra 1/2 hour to prepare.

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A model's BMI! What? Are you serious? Don't get me wrong, while I agree that our emaciated model problem needs to be addressed, it doesn't deserve the attention it's getting -- we aren't a nation of underweight people. Sadly, and more importantly, we are a nation of well, obese people -- and sadly that includes our kids!

Look around you. Look at your children. That's where the BMI index will be more useful and thankfully schools are taking notice, because you're not!

Some schools are sending Body Mass Index scores home with report cards. The BMI, in case you didn't know, is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to both boys and girls (men and women).

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Ten extra pounds?
Messy house?
Kids with too many toys? Amen to that.
Counting your blessings can be hard when all you see is the downside.

The cure: Perspective through do-gooding. Edmay Mayers, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was stationed in Iraq and while there she volunteered to makes sure that children who are innocently caught up in this war receive stuffed toys to help brighten their day. And she (and the kids) need your help. Remember, happy children help to make happy adults (which can lead to a healthy lifestyle). So as you start to pack up your children's old toys to make room for what Santa might leave under the tree, think about donating to children in Iraq. Specifically they are looking for stuffed animals (who doesn't love a stuffed toy?).

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Yesterday, Bethany told us that Australia recalled Bindeez toys for containing the 'date-rape' drug gamma hydroxy butyrate. Well it seems that today the U.S. has followed suit by recalling the popular toy Aqua Dots for the same reason.

Two children in the U.S. and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads from the toys. Shockingly,
these toys were found to contain a chemical that converts into a powerful "date rape" drug when ingested. In the United States, the toy goes by the name Aqua Dots, a highly popular holiday toy distributed by Toronto-based Spin Master Toys. It is called Bindeez in Australia, where ironically it was named toy of the year at an industry function earlier this year.

Scientists say a chemical coating on the beads, when ingested, metabolizes into the so-called date rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate. When eaten, the compound - made from common and easily available ingredients - can induce unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death. It's reported that the toys were supposed to use 1,5-pentanediol, a nontoxic compound found in glue, but instead contained the harmful 1,4-butanediol, which is widely used in cleaners and plastics and happens to be much less expensive than pentanediol. Both chemicals are manufactured in China.

To prevent any other child from being hurt, parents should take the product away from children immediately. Sadly, to my horrification, my boys actually had these Aqua Dots -- the glow in the dark kind -- on their Christmas list.

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If you're tired of hearing your kids sneeze, sniffle and cough, you have probably investigated allergies as the cause of all that mess. Nobody likes to hear those sounds coming from any kid, but outside of drugs and medical processes that may just mask allergies, what can you do?

First off, provide a good complement of solid, nutrition-packed foods like tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers and fish, according to this story.

The regular consumption of those foods end up causing a 40 percent reduction in allergy symptoms, according to a study published recently in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology. Although the link between these foods and the expression of allergies is unknown, it's still rather intriguing. The battle for many of us is to get our kids to eat these great foods.

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Fit Gadgets is a weekly feature focusing on products and technology that will help you get fit and stay motivated or simply make life easier. It may even be a gadget that could help to save your life. From the mainstream to the obscure, I'll let you know what works and what doesn't.

In December of 2000, a perfectly healthy student died of cardiac arrest during a high school basketball game. He walked off the court at half-time. Two minutes later, he collapsed to the floor. It took the ambulance 35 minutes to arrive and they were too late.

If this school had been equipped with an automated external defibrillator (AED) -- a machine that shocks the heart and increases survival rates when paired with CPR -- that boy might be alive today. The American Heart Association reports that the chances of survival drop 7 to 10 percent with every minute that passes before the victim receives treatment. With an AED on site, you can start defibrillation almost immediately.

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Today mark's the official end of summer, and by tomorrow most kids will be back in school, hitting the books. Daily exercise, good sleep habits, and consistent good nutrition will help your child have the energy to soak up all that new found knowledge, but studying for midterms or writing that English paper can bring even the most well-rested, well-fed student down.

Snacks can give hard working kids a pick-me-up, and according to this article, the best foods for studying include carbs and comfort foods. But before you let your little Einstein reach for cookies and potato chips, keep in mind that healthy carbs will provide a slow and steady pipeline of energy to the brain, instead of the crash and burn roller coaster of refined carbs. So what's a healthy carb? Try serving your student treats like apples and peanut butter, grapes, whole grain cereals or pretzels, soup, warm milk, or even a glass of herbal tea.

These snacks won't guarantee A's and B's, but they will provide energy and cut down on stress while your child puts in that extra effort.

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Did you know that if children are taught how to 'eat right' from an early age, they do listen -- and will even skip those favorite (but fatty) meals in the process. Talk about being impressionable!

Researchers in Finland stated that frequent counseling of kids and whole families about the dangers of saturated fats and the benefits of a proper diet caused reduced cholesterol levels in kids up to the age of 14.

The researchers stated something I completely agree with: lifetime eating habits are formed early in life. In turn the earlier you can get those kids on healthier lifestyles (and all the choices that make them up), the healthier they will be into adulthood.

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Kids are impressionable from very early ages, from mouth movements to sounds the finally reaching the mimicking stage. Wouldn't it be great to have your kids grow up mimicking a very sound nutritional eating program that would lay the foundation to a healthy teenage and adult lifestyle?

That can be had, according to a new study which concluded that teaching a low-fat eating lifestyle to kids ends up causing them to eat more healthy later in life, even when they move away from home.

that's the best kind of impressionable tactic we can give kids, right? Treating your body like a temple is incredibly important to many of us. After all, all you have is your health when it comes down to it -- and a big portion of that rests on your nutrition.

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