{"id":1095,"date":"2016-04-25T09:23:41","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T21:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/?p=1095"},"modified":"2021-05-18T09:39:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T21:39:52","slug":"a-low-carb-high-fat-diet-at-nzs-biggest-boarding-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/2016\/04\/25\/a-low-carb-high-fat-diet-at-nzs-biggest-boarding-school\/","title":{"rendered":"A Low Carb, High-fat diet at NZ’s biggest boarding school"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dilworth’s new diet a recipe for success<\/h4>\n
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By ERIN SPEEDY\u00a0 –\u00a0Sunday Star Times<\/strong><\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

School chefs Robert McDonald and Craig Johnston say they knew something had to change after seeing too many overweight students.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A triangular hunk\u00a0of cheese. An apple. A\u00a0handful of walnuts. This is morning tea.<\/p>\n

“Sir, are there any oranges,” asks one student, testing the chef. He knows he’s not allowed the fruit – it’s reserved as a treat at New Zealand’s biggest boarding school.<\/p>\n

The boys-only school, which has campuses in Auckland City and rural south Auckland, began revamping its cafeteria menu last year\u00a0in an attempt to help students slim down.<\/p>\n

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\"Dilworth<\/p>\n

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Dilworth students, from left: Calvin Le – Head Boy, Sean Nolan – Prefect and Heamasi Faiva – Prefect . The school has tackled the obesity issue head on and instituted a high protein\/low carb diet across its whole campus.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0“We saw a couple of our boys that were leaving the campus basically in that morbidly obese sort of stage, and it was quite disheartening,” says lead chef Craig Johnston. “I was like ‘hang on, we’re just leaving a place and getting bigger and fatter, and all the complications arise from that’.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Known as the “low carbohydrate, high-fat diet” (LCHF), sugars were cut from the\u00a0menu,\u00a0carbohydrates were replaced\u00a0with whole foods and good fats using nutrition advice from dietician Dr Caryn Zinn and Dr Grant Schoffield.<\/p>\n

Canned fruit,\u00a0processed cereals and yoghurts went out the door for breakfast to be replaced with a daily cooked breakfast of\u00a0\u00a0sausages, scrambled eggs, tomatoes and more.<\/p>\n

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\"Robert<\/p>\n

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Robert McDonald – Head Chef overall, left, and Craig Johnston – Leading Chef Junior Campus in the Dilworth cafeteria championed a change to the LCHF diet after seeing too many of their boys overweight.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0Cakes and slices were kicked to the curb in favour of chicken wings, or tuna, tomatoes and avocado on toast. Boiled eggs,\u00a0cheeses and nuts have also been introduced.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Dilworth is the largest charitable education trust in the country, providing private school education to 640 students in “straitened circumstances”.<\/p>\n

The students attend junior and senior campuses in Auckland, while the rural campus hosts year 9 boys.<\/p>\n

Needing to lose a little weight himself, Johnston decided to personally test the diet before letting the students and their parents know he was planning to turn their eating habits upside down.<\/p>\n

“I did it – and I lost 27 kilos, so it works.”<\/p>\n

Losing the weight saw\u00a0Johnston reverse a number of serious health issues.\u00a0He is now able to exercise and\u00a0has become something of a role model to the students.<\/p>\n

Head chef overall Robert McDonald says the menu change has been controversial but is paying off.\u00a0The school has a high population of Maori and Pacific Islanders who, he says, may tend to be heavier than other students.<\/p>\n

Pasifika students make up 38 per cent of the student body, Europeans make up 27.5 per cent, Maori 24 per cent and Asian 7.5 per cent.<\/p>\n

The ethnicity of the schools students caused controversy last month when four members of the Old Boys Association questioned it was an “imbalance” and were consequently suspended.<\/p>\n

Individually monitored\u00a0weekly \u2013\u00a0the boys have lost centimetres from their waistlines and seen\u00a0reductions in their Body Mass Indexes.<\/p>\n

“We’ve still got boys getting taller, fitter and stronger.\u00a0We don’t want them shrinking,” Johnston says.<\/p>\n

“It’s not a diet, it’s not about restricting the food that the boys are being given or getting. It’s about giving them the appropriate quantity \u2013 but whole foods which are low in carbohydrates and therefore low in sugar.”<\/p>\n

If there is any impediment to the boys’ weightloss, it\u00a0is school holidays, with\u00a0many coming back to class\u00a0sporting bigger bellies after returning to their regular eating patterns at home, McDonald says.<\/p>\n

Head boy Kevin Le agrees, saying a return home over the Easter break meant gorging on Easter eggs.<\/p>\n

Despite finding it difficult at first, Le says the boys have enjoyed the change and appreciated learning\u00a0about the effects of sugar.<\/p>\n

“That’s good in terms of putting us all on the right track I think all the boys will take that on board, at least. Boys will take on other foods as well, but the whole healthy living thing will have an impact.”<\/p>\n

The move to a new diet has meant a slight rise in food costs for the school but McDonald would recommend LCHF\u00a0to any other school.<\/p>\n

“I would give them the recommendation that this is working, and is beneficial towards the health and wellbeing of any person and my recommendation would be that they should follow it.<\/p>\n

“At the end of the day if you take out as many free sugars and processed foods, and replace them with whole foods and natural ingredients that are cooked in\u00a0natural fats, what can go wrong?”<\/p>\n

Education\u00a0Ministry associate deputy secretary\u00a0Karl Le Quesne reckons the department would\u00a0support efforts by any school or tertiary institute to promote better eating choices.<\/p>\n

The ministry\u00a0is\u00a0working with health and other agencies\u00a0to put the childhood obesity plan into action to help fight child obesity.<\/p>\n

Health Ministry principal adviser \u2013 public health\u00a0Harriette Carr says\u00a0the education sector\u00a0is an important setting for teaching kids how to establish and maintain a healthy diet and activity messages.<\/p>\n

“It is important to ensure that children and young people are equipped with the knowledge, attitudes and supportive environments to enable them to establish healthy eating behaviours and attain and maintain a healthy weight.”<\/p>\n

And the school’s dietary trailblazing could even boost academic achievement \u2013 though the students\u00a0are\u00a0already\u00a0doing pretty well on that score: some 98 per cent of Dilworth students gained\u00a0level two NCEA in 2015, well up on the national pass rate for boys of 73 per cent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dilworth’s new diet a recipe for success By ERIN SPEEDY\u00a0 –\u00a0Sunday Star Times School chefs Robert McDonald and Craig Johnston say they knew something had to change after seeing too many overweight students. A triangular hunk\u00a0of cheese. An apple. A\u00a0handful of walnuts. This is morning tea. “Sir, are there any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35,27,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2157,"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions\/2157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/dietnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}