Nutrition in our Schools

I think nutrition in schools is an essential that should have been put into place long ago.  Nutrition in general is a part of one’s overall health and where students eat breakfast and/or lunch at school 5 days a week it is important for our schools to provide nutritious meals.  Especially elementary school children who do not yet have a full grasp as to what nutrition actually is.

Growing up we had French fries, pizza, and soda at my school mixed with sugary cereals and other fried foods with very little healthy alternatives, as you ate what you were served.  Today’s obesity I believe has a lot to do with schools lunches and/or breakfast as that is approximately half of their entire food intake.

“Empty calories from added sugars and solid fats contribute to 40% of daily calories for children and adolescents aged 2–18 years, affecting the overall quality of their diets. Approximately half of these empty calories come from six sources: soda, fruit drinks, dairy desserts, grain desserts, pizza, and whole milk.” http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/nutrition/facts.htm

http://www.myrecipes.com/kids/healthy-kids/healthy-changes-school-lunches-00420000004372/

Children should be better educated on their choices from a young age and in a school setting that should be one of the top priorities.  Now you can’t force a child to eat anything, but only offering healthy options the hope would be that they would not only eventually eat it but as they grow to make more and more healthy choices and choose to live a healthy lifestyle.  The food that is currently offered in schools should only be what we consider to be healthy and even banning unhealthy packed food lunches to be brought in.  As this could cause controversy and as we know from grade school children like to trade things from lunches being brought in.

There is a meal program “National School Lunch Program” that helps schools offer healthy meals and also helps them offer reduced and free lunches across the country.  This program being tweaked over the years and with a society that is becoming more and more health conscious will hopefully eventually implement a permanent healthy school lunch program with the help of the states making their own menu providing only healthy meals.

http://www.doe.mass.edu/cnp/nprograms/nslp.html

There has been some controversy since a lot of the students don’t like healthier option but unfortunately that does begin at home and we as educators are their secondary education on health and healthy eating habits.  But also as educators we should be putting our best foot forward to promote healthy eating and it seems that slowly but surely (by the time I have children) healthy options in school will be the only option.

"Nothing is more important in our national life than the welfare of our children, and proper nourishment comes first in attaining this welfare." ~Harry S. Truman~