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Childhood obesity: may be due to school lunches

While there are some model school lunch programs that show how tasty school food can be, they are not the norm. In fact, if you talk to children who attend your neighborhood school, you may find that a) the school is not following the healthy food suggestions or b) the food is not edible. Here are some things to think about.

1) Quality cost: If you’ve been to the market recently, you may have noticed how expensive fresh meats and produce are. If paying $ 25 for a beef roast for your family is tough on your budget, try buying quality meat for a school.

When our children were young, they told us that they had switched to healthy foods. Sorry, when the lettuce on the salad bar is rusty and the other veggies are hard to tell apart, it doesn’t rate me as healthy. Neither is cheese pizza with a tablespoon of fat in the middle. I’ve been there, ate that.

2) Flavor: Three things add a lot of flavor to food cheaply. Those are salt, sugar, and fat. Interestingly, that is what we are supposed to cut down to have a healthy lunch. Some schools have cut them. Some have not. In the end, both can lead to childhood obesity.

3) Wasted food equals after school snacks: If a child is served healthy food that does not taste good, the food will not be eaten. It will go to the trash and the child will wait until after school to deal with hunger.

Unless mom and dad only keep healthy foods at home, guess what the kid is going to eat? If the child passes a store that sells potato chips and chocolate bars, guess what he will buy? Now we are not just wasting food, we are promoting bad eating habits.

To do: None of the above has to happen. There are inexpensive and healthy ways to prepare food. I do it all the time and I am not a professional chef. There are some schools that grow their own vegetables. This adds exercise and learning to the whole food experience.

Some schools shop locally, especially in areas of the country that can produce more than one crop a year. This lowers the price, promotes the local economy, and you haven’t been sitting in a refrigerator somewhere for six weeks waiting for them to need it.

This is something that parents and grandparents have to insist on. Talk to the school. Talk to the cooks to see what they need. Make a plan and present it. Can be done.

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