Local businessman and Howell Public Schools to launch new nutrition program
Photo Credit: Tim Codd
myNutratek founder, Tim Codd, promised to go to lunch with his daughter, Lexie, every week for the rest of his life after students made fun of her weight. That journey has now evolved into Codd's patent pending program.
November 1, 2011 • Nick Barnowski, Editor in Chief
Filed under News, Top Stories
On Tim Codd’s business card for his company, called myNutratek™, it doesn’t say CEO or President. It says Parent.
The successful local businessman says he’s a full time parent and a part time worker. But with the launch of his new patent pending wellness program at Howell Public Schools upcoming, the part time worker will be taking on a big time job.
myNutratek™ is a web-based system designed to help kids get active and healthy, and it’s taken the Livingston County area by storm. The program allows students, parent, faculty and the community to easily track their nutritional intake, daily activities, sleeping habits and more. The robust suite of tools are designed to educate, reward and aid its users in reaching their wellness goals.
Howell Public Schools plans on implementing myNutratek™ within the first week of November in an effort to get students on track with making healthy choices for healthy living.
Humble Beginnings
The vision for this program began three years ago.
“My daughter was crying when she came home from school,” Codd said, looking back on the day. “I asked her why she was upset, and she said someone made fun of her weight.”
That’s when he made a commitment to her: He would go to lunch with her once a week for the rest of his life. As Codd navigated his way through this journey with his daughter, Lexie, he learned valuable information about school lunch programs.
“The lunch providers are incredible people doing incredible things, but they’re very limited when it comes to resources and what they are able to provide,” he said. After seeing his daughter participate in a commitment to a healthier living, he decided to do something about it.
Codd took his daughter to a Detroit Red Wings game and chatted with Chris Osgood, Kris Draper, and (then) Detroit Tigers pitcher Nate Robertson. All three were intrigued in the basis of what the program had to offer. Then, Lexie asked Robertson if he would attend lunch with her. He agreed, and one month later, every kid in Lexie’s elementary school was lining up, choosing healthy options and being polite in exchange for an autograph session with the Tigers pitcher who won 51 games with the club from 2003 to 2009.
“The kids weren’t afraid of eating healthy or making wonderful choices, and they benefited from it,” Codd said. “So I realized that if we put a program in place that has rewards or incentives, these kids will do wonderful things.” Jonas Jerebko, NBA star from Sweden can testify to this. He was overwhelmed by the affection he received from kids at Hornung and Maltby schools. The two Brighton elementary schools earned the recent visit by practicing healthy options on myNutratek™. Jonas was so impressed with the results, he is now “blogging” on his website about the virtues of myNutratek™.
That’s how myNutratek™ was born and living today.
Working with Howell Public Schools
“It was not a hard sell,” Howell Public Schools Superintendent Ron Wilson said of the program. “Tim met with me, introduced it, and almost immediately we said we got to do this.”
One of the prime focuses on Wilson’s agenda has been child obesity. The school district is already involved in a program with Cleary University and the YMCA of Livingston County in a project that revolves around a community recreation wellness center. After being introduced to myNutratek™, Wilson was eager to incorporate it into the district’s plans.
The only problem was how myNutratek™ and Howell Public Schools would join forces and offer the product to the students.
Initially, Codd wanted to charge between five-to-twenty thousand dollars for the use of the program. Then, after the new gubernatorial administration came in and cut the budget for every student at public schools, Codd realized he had to change his business model. Schools such as Howell Public Schools and the Brighton school district were willing to pay for the service, but didn’t have the means to do so.
“After we realized this, my business model changed to gifting myNutratek™ to the schools and finding healthy relationships with hospitals, insurance companies, and appropriate retailers,” Codd said.
Codd found similar passion, as Oakwood Health Systems, Cleary University and other corporations, jumped on board to help provide myNutratek™ to local school districts. Companies, such as large retail chains immediately identify the number of opportunities it presents to them. “Right now the schools do not pay anything,” Codd explained. “There’s no burden on the IT department, there’s no burden on the resources other than they provide us the nutritional values of their food on the lunch menu, and we do everything else.”
Through this system, kids have the flexibility to record their food selections, record their activities and sleeping habits on their own time.
The program was presented to the Board of Education and received with open arms.
“The board was excited about this opportunity,” Wilson explained. “They thought it was a good thing for the kids, a good thing for the district, and a good thing for the community.”
The myNutratek™ Program
“When Tim came to talk to me about a year ago, we were on the same page and both felt very passionate about this issue,” Wilson said.
The issue? Child wellness. Recent reports have included alarming numbers regarding childhood obesity, exercise, and sleep habits. According to the Institute of Medicine, the number of overweight children and adolescents in the U.S. has tripled since 1980, and more than 20% of U.S. children between the ages of two through five are considered obese. The University of Michigan concluded that the lack of physical activity impacts children and adolescents in their ability to comprehend, problem solve and learn. In a 2011 study, the Pennsylvania State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center found that kids who don’t get enough sleep face a greater risk of being overweight or obese
Stats such as these are rightfully concerning to both Wilson and Codd.
“I think the whole idea of raising awareness of what kids are eating and the quantities of what kids are eating will raise awareness of what that impacts,” Wilson said. “My mission as Superintendent of the public schools is to educate the kids in our community.
If we know, based on research that diet, amount of sleep, whether you’re well hydrated, the amount you exercise can impact the way you learn, it certainly has to play into the formula of ensuring that we’re doing what’s best for the kids.”
So how exactly does myNutratek™ allow the schools to do that?
After registering at howell.mynutratek.com, students, parents and faculty members will gain immediate access to a wide variety of tools, interactive games, quizzes, reports, learning materials and other third-party wellness expertise that they can use to help them reach healthy goals.
myNutratek™ strength is in its simplicity. The individual tools have an easy-to-use, consistent and friendly design where users can input and track their wellness information. One of the sites sections is “myCalories”. In this section of the site, students can enter any type of food they consume throughout the day. After building up a personalized database of food they’ve taken in, the kids can then view their own nutritional history and see just how many calories they’ve consumed each day.
Another section, called “myJournals,” is a collection of useful tools that allow kids to track and record their physical activity, amount of sleep, body mass index (BMI), and the section’s main calling point: what they eat at the school cafeteria that day.
By visiting “myCafeteria,” students can put in their school and date they ate at the school cafeteria. Through the input of what the school was serving on their menu that day, the kids will be able to easily record what they ate and see nutritional values for each food item and beverage.
myNutratek™ has collaborated with the founder of Scientifically Proven Entertainment, Nathaniel “Than” McClure. This critically acclaimed “gamer” has been involved with notable Franchises such as Call of Duty, Command and Conquer and Guitar Heroes. Than and Scientifically Proven has recently completed Michigan’s first ever cross platform game Man vs. Wild for the Xbox 360, Playstation3 and Nintendo Wii. Scientifically Proven Entertainment will engineer interactive games around healthy options for myNutratek™.
Wilson and the school district plan to implement the system on November 1. They plan on rolling it out to all three levels of the district, elementary, middle, and high school, and seeing which level takes to it most. For the rest of this year, Wilson and myNutratek™ plan on working out any of the bugs they might encounter in the system and have it embedded in the curriculum by next year.
“I’m hoping it will impact our district in several ways: academically, athletically, and behaviorally. I see it as being a very holistic approach to dealing with several issues within the district,” Wilson said.
Even before the product’s official launch, Codd is very happy with the progress.
“What we have is the technology that records, reports, and rewards wellness and childhood decisions and choices around healthy options and consequences,” Codd stated. “It’s not based on weight gained and lost; it’s based on participation in the program and understanding the consequences around your choices.”
Now, three years after witnessing his daughter’s pain, his goal has become a reality.
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