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Strollerderby
Who wants to spend a lot of time eating in a crowded, noisy cafeteria?
Gah! Don’t the administrators at The Little Village Academy in Chicago know anything about kids? Or anything about today’s parents? You can’t tell either of them what to do. But, you can sell them on what to do. Even when that means forcing them to buy and eat school lunches.
Background: Six years ago, The Little Village Academy banned outside school lunches and require all kids to dine from the offerings in the cafeteria. The school’s principal, Elsa Carmona, said it’s a matter of student health. Kids with home lunches were often bringing chips and sodas, and she wanted to promote good nutrition.
So she required it. Problem is, that’s all she did. Continue reading »
Parents hit the frontlines to keep their kids healthy
Has a group of parents in Philadelphia gone too far in battle to watch what students eat?
Every day a group of parents stand guard outside the Oxford Food Shop in North Philadelphia – foot soldiers in a national battle over the diets of children that has taken on new fervor.
With 20 percent of the nation’s children obese, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed new standards for federally subsidized school meals that call for more balanced meals and, for the first time, a limit on calories. The current standard specifies only a minimum calorie count, which some schools meet by adding sweet foods. Continue reading »
Michelle Obama on child obesity
Today marks the first anniversary of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to fight childhood obesity. Let’s Move is a public health initiative she launched last February with the goal of ending the obesity epidemic within a generation.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to join a phone call with the First Lady as she and surgeon general Regina Benjamin spoke to the medical community about Let’s Move’s first year, the impact it has had, and goals for the future.
I heard some facts that I already knew, like that childhood obesity has more than tripled since the 1980s, and now one in three American kids is overweight or obese (40 percent of African American and Hispanic children).
And some facts I didn’t know: According to the Dr. Benjamin, a recent study showed that as early as three years old, kids who are overweight show an inflammatory response linked to heart disease later in life.
As Michelle Obama talked, I couldn’t help notice how little she resembled the nanny-state food-police some complain about. Here’s what she sounded like to me and what Let’s Move has accomplished so far: Continue reading »
Soon-to-be school lunch of the past?
Today, President Obama officially outlawed junky school lunches — sort of. With a focus on bringing healthy food to more children, Obama gave schools more funding and better guidelines when feeding children. He also set the stage for eventually eliminating sugary drinks and nutrition-less snacks from school campuses all together.
Obama signed into law the landmark legislation Congress passed which should go far in making nutritious food available to thousands of more children and also keep subsidized junk out of the lunchroom spotlight. Continue reading »
School's out: Where do the kids eat?
It’s almost Thanksgiving. No school! Kids are excited! Parents, maybe not so much, but not for the usual reasons of wondering how we’ll fill the time. For millions of parents, kids at home means kids to feed and with a continuing recession and rising food prices, that’s not always easy.
According to the US Agriculture department, in 2009, 50 million households, that’s 15 percent of all families in the US, were food insecure. In other words, those households weren’t sure if they’d have enough money for food or flat out couldn’t buy enough to feed their families. Continue reading »
Should tater tots be banned?
The federal government is considering a ban on potatoes in school lunch programs. Of course, this has potato growers in an outrage. Tater tot-loving kids aren’t so keen on it either.
Limits have already been placed on the starchy tuber. Families on the WIC program can’t use their funds to buy potatoes, since studies showed that they were already well-represented in the diets of these low-income families. The ban was a trial and program administrators will make a decision on whether to continue with the limits or lift it.
Why are the feds picking on the potato? Continue reading »
- School lunches should not look like this.
Chocolate milk is one of the quintessential American comfort foods, right up there with grilled cheese and chicken soup. Could something so good be wrong?
Yes, say food activists and nutritionists who are trying to get it pulled from school lunch menus. Chocolate milk is packed with empty calories your kids just don’t need. That’s only one of several reasons to avoid it.
They’re getting a lot of pushback from angry kids and parents, though. Chocolate milk is so well-loved, even health-concious moms and dads are saying, “If chocolate milk is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”
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