Beyond Prescriptions

My daughter just recently remarked to me that our teen grandson no longer wanted to eat in the school cafeteria.  Curious, she asked him why.  His answer revealed what is being said throughout the country regarding children and school food.  “It’s making me fat, Mom!”  His decision is not about the food but the calories.  In fact he enjoys the food.

When she told me this, it brought me back to my days as a cafeteria manager, serving chicken nuggets, hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries and horrible canned vegetables that the children always threw away. I knew these foods were high in calories (the average cafeteria meal is said to be 800 calories and 1479 milligrams sodium!)    I would have loved to change the menu but most of the food came to us in USDA  boxes quickly stored away in freezers.  We simply heated them up.  This food leads to the same villains that afflict American adults:  too much fat, cholesterol, sugar, and salt.

Watching Jamie Oliver’s show, The Food Revolution,  a show about making changes in our nation’s school cafeterias, made me realize how, as parents and grandparents, we all need to do our part to make a difference.     It all begins with each family committing to helping our children make healthier choices and recognizing the connection between childhood diet and disease.  Kid’s food habits usually are in place by kindergarten, so education about better food choices definitely begin in the home.  David Levitsky, a Cornell University nutritionist, found that children who had learned about relatively unusal and healthy foods such as bulgur, couscous, greens, etc. ate between two and nine times more than their classmates when offered such food choices in school.

The picture on this post could be me as a child. As I stated in my first post, I was very overweight as a child.  And I did not get this way by watching too much TV (we did not even get a TV until I was in the 5th grade!)  or going to McDonalds too many times.  I do not remember any fast food restaurants as a child.  (The first McDonalds opened in 1950).   My parents, both raised during the Depression, insisted on heaping our plates with food, good homemade food, but too much food.  They did not want to deprive us as they were deprived.  As a result, I simply became overweight from overeating.  Exercise literally saved me from becoming an obese teen.

Michelle Obama, featured on the cover of Newsweek this week, has begun a program called Let’s Move. a nationwide campaign with a single goal:  to help children born today reach adulthood at a healthy weight.  Focusing on things that families can do such as providing more nutritious, fresh food, and finding new ways to help  kids be more physically active is part of the campaign.   I am encouraged by so much media about this subject.   I would love to hear what your  family is doing to promote healthy living.