There were so many points in the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution that we can take to our own schools. The food vendors that supply our school food service providers certainly need to be accountable and make the most healthful foods available at reasonable cost for our children. The food service providers need to make a commitment to serving fresh, less processed meals.
BUT, one major point from the show, which I have personally witnessed as well as many others, is the food brought from home. This picture is of sack lunches brought by three students on a recent field trip. The red water bottle had some kind of flavored water in it (The student “Can’t drink plain water”), at least 8 bags of chips or cookies……. I think there was a smashed PBJ that got tossed. Should I continue?
In school, students are a captive audience, where messages may be taught or caught. Maybe there needs to be an effort by schools to encourage the students to bring healthy lunches that will in turn encourage students to pressure parents or guardians to provide more healthful foods.
Obviously, we can make efforts within each of our own family, which is great, but also as obvious is the need for many many others to jump on board. From what I can tell in recent months, there seems to be an honest (granted slow) effort by food service providers to improve the quality of foods available. Hurray!
What are you doing to ensure healthful school meals for your children? Is your school doing anything to encourage healthful sack lunches? I would love to read and share your comments. Please sign up as a follower and also share this with others who are concerned for our children’s nutrition.
The other dilemma is that summer break is fast approaching. We'll need to be sure to keep our own momentum going and continue into next school year. My plan for this blog over the summer is to discuss some creative lunch ideas for each food group that we may be able to share with our friends and schools when the next school year starts.
Here’s to a rainbow plate of fresh foods! Lauri
Good post. It's challenging to get people to change habits. The message has to change and unfortunately our many young kids who are developing their lifestyle habits are getting the message from their parents that it's okay to eat candy bars, chips and soda for lunch. I see it packed in lunches every day. The segement on Oliver's show where he dumped all the food for a week on the family's kitchen table was appalling to some, but to others it was "normal." The sad thing is the kids in that family have no idea how bad that kind of food is for them. At some point it stops being the school's responsibility to educate families about healthy choices. Having said that though, the schools have an opportunity to influence behavior through modeling and if the school lunches have fresh, unprocessed, healthy options, that may send the right signals to kids who can take those requests home. At a minimum, it shows the schools take their responsibility seriously and provide at least one healthy meal a day for a child being raised on processed food. Wasn't that the original point of the National School Lunch Program anyway? I'd rather my tax dollars be spent to subsidize healthy food rather than more of the same disturbing nutritionally void, overly processed items they may be eating when they are not at school. Why reinforce bad habits at school when there are simple ways to introduce new healthy habits. The other thing we can all do is continue to model, either directly or indirectly, making healthy choices. We send all kinds of food in our kids sack lunches and you'd be amazed how interested the other kids are when they see mine eating pommegranite, kiwi, red, yellow and orange peppers, stir fry wraps, etc. The kids are not always pre-disposed to junk. It's a little bit of the "grass is greener" mentality so we always send enough that our kids can hand out a few samples (against the rules I know. So sue me.) That doesn't solve the bigger problem, but if it helps just one kid begin to think about food differently, it's worth it.
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