The Wichita school district has enacted policies that focus on providing healthy eating options for students, but Alice Waters, who established a gardening and cooking project in the public schools in New York, argues in this piece that educators should go a step further:
“Schools should not just serve food; they should teach it in an interactive, hands-on way, as an academic subject. Children’s eating habits stay with them for the rest of their lives. The best way to defeat the obesity epidemic is to teach children about food — and thereby prevent them from ever becoming obese.”
Unless children are taught how to eat right, she argues, they are likely to keep refusing healthy options.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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8 Comments
It is the job of PARENTS to teach their children healthy eating and fitness habits. i am getting tired of this nanny state nonsense!
V.L.R.B!!
I agree with Ian, but I don’t discount the idea of having lunch time a subject.
I heard about this on NPR a few months back. Thought it was a great idea.
It’s pretty simple, if schools and parents would not offer junk food to kids, they won’t eat it. If someone offered my a choice between a twinkie and a carrot when I was 10, I know which one I’d pick! Snacks weren’t even offered in school way back when. We couldn’t even chew gum and the only refreshment offered beside the lousy lunch was the water fountain.I never kept junk food in the house when my kids were growing up, so they never developed a taste for it, now they lecture me about what I eat (I love everything that’s bad, why does it have to taste so darn good?).Kids are doomed unless schools and parents take the bull by the horns and actually do something besides “offer them healthy choices”.
Good point, Damoon.
Why “teach” kids about good nutrition when the cafeteria is serving them up ham hoagies and ice cream?
Of course I cant remember the details here, but in the movie “Supersize Me” there was a segment about how little food is actually “cooked” on site. Instead, they get USDA surplus and prepackaged foods that the cooks just heat. Really bad nutrition.
Then they talked about a school putting organic food and “cooked on site” food on their lunch menue. They kept to their budget without the high salt, high fat, pre-prepared junk the USDA sends them. Student performance improved dramatically.
If they can do it in cities, why cant we, right here in farm country?
Damoon,You’re right on-target with this one. The key for kids’ food in schools is balance.
Also, If you bring it into your house, you’re going to eat it. Willpower is not going to need to come into play if you simply don’t have access to the “bad stuff”.
Agreed. On another thread Hank eloquently commented about the total ignorance about nutrition on the part of so many adults. How the heck are THEY going to teach their kids anything?
Ham hoagies aren’t necessarily all that bad PL – depends on what is really in them.
It sounds like a good idea. But they shouldn’t penalize kids from eating certain foods in the cafeteria.