With talks of a strike looming for Chartwells employees working in Eastern School District cafeterias
it brings to mind firstly brown bagged lunches and second, the role schools play in promoting health.
Without a doubt serving and promoting safe and healthy food in schools is very important. It can play a significant role in teaching youth and encouraging healthy eating, active living and the acceptance and appreciation of people of all shape and sizes. We know too that nutrition is linked to learning. Children who are well nourished perform better academically, have better concentration, show improved behaviour and have improved attendance at school.
Children and adolescents' eating and activity patterns impact their health and well being. And following suggested guidelines for healthy eating and physical activity can help to improve this. If this is something you've got out of the habit of packing a lunch there are some great local resources online to get you started. Living Healthy- Healthy Students, Healthy Schools, at www.livinghealthyschools.com, is a site which features some great information on healthy initiatives in our schools. For parents and caretakers there's excellent advice on the School Food Guidelines (i.e. Background info on the food suggested to be served in schools), and Ideas to Support Healthy Eating like Healthy Lunches, or Healthy Snacks, and my personal favorite, an Affordable Healthy Eating Resource. If you haven't already check out this site, I highly recommend that you do. There is great information, suggestion and tips to fill a few bellies with homemade lunches.A strike is certainly a difficult situation for everyone involved, but if we concentrate on what one of the positive outcomes might be, it could be that more kids will be packing and bringing food from home. Bringing a packed lunch can mean a couple extra things. First, you can control what your food options are and from there have more flexibility to choose a healthy choice. You can also save money. But best of all, if a child helps to prepare their lunch, it equips them up with essential healthy eating skills that can form lifelong habits. Think about that last point for a moment. If you bought lunch daily as a child while going to school, would you be more or less likely to make homemade food as an adult? I might be jumping ahead of myself, as I don't think the causality of that point has been proven just yet, but we do know that people who learn or have life skills i.e. food preparation and cooking, are better equipped to make healthier food choices.
Hopefully that's some positive thinking and inspiration for eating well. I do want to leave people with
something to think about, and it relates to the Chinese proverb, 'Tell me and I'll forget; show me and
I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.' We all know healthy eating and physical activity go
hand in hand, and you can't really have one without the other, at least you . Currently either credits
from physical education and/or a healthy living course are required for high school graduation in our
province. What about making home economics and phys ed required too. I'm not a teacher and can't
talk too much about instruction or learning, but I am a dietitian and know that knowledge of food and
cooking skills is necessary for a understanding of what it means to live a healthy life. Not only that, it
can and will empower people to take control over what they eat. After all, knowledge is power. Let's
show kids where food comes from, how to make healthy delicious food and why farm to fork is good.
Without practical, firsthand experience in preparing foods and learning about nutrition, opportunity for choice and control decrease and we end up with a dependence on processed and fast foods.
As seen in The Telegram February 6, 2012
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