WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?

SCHOOL FOOD AND THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC – PART 2

Spending six to seven hours a day or more at school means many children eat breakfast and lunch at school, putting schools in a critical position to encourage healthy eating behaviors. According to local and nationwide rules, school meals are regulated to ensure they meet nutrition standards.

In the first part of this series, we explored the dangers of the heavily processed, greasy, sugar filled foods given to children for school meals. Examples include Pop Tarts,

Mini Cinnis, stuffed cheese breadsticks, fat cat scone, and chocolate milk.

There are school food regulations in place regarding calories, saturated fat, and sodium content, but not for sugar content. Pop Tarts and chocolate milk are not a balanced meal and should never be considered a nutritious breakfast for a child. Sugar is very addictive, harmful to the health of children, and should be monitored like other harmful ingredients in school food.

BY JAMIE HUDSON

The Wellness Policy Progress Report for each school in the West Ada School district shows that many schools do not provide annual training to staff on nutrition or physical activity. If staff do not receive any kind of nutrition education, how can they properly provide nutritious food that students need to fuel their brains and bodies? Nutrition education should be a requirement for food service staff.

The Nutrition Education section of the West Ada website states, “West Ada School District and the Board of Trustees will ensure that a comprehensive district-wide wellness policy is implemented that includes goals for nutrition, health (physical, social, and mental/emotional), and physical fitness, as well as nutrition promotion, integrated within the sequential, comprehensive health education curriculum, and coordinated with the district’s School Nutrition Services department.”

Unhealthy school food options should not be commonplace when regulations specify the types of food to be served in U.S. schools. In providing results of a school health policies study, the CDC stated that, “To monitor progress in each of these areas, it is critical to measure periodically the extent to which schools and school districts nationwide have policies and practices in place that address these components.”

These policies are not being implemented district-wide and this must become a priority to help improved the growing obesity epidemic.

The growing obesity epidemic is a national health crisis, and the West Ada School District has both a responsibility and opportunity to make a huge positive impact on the health of the children they serve.

Schools must work to find solutions to help their students eat healthy food, but the burden cannot land fully on schools as parents must take responsibility for teaching healthy eating habits at home. If schools serve vegetables only to have them thrown in the trash, can they be held responsible?

There is certainly a need for schools to serve healthy food, but they also need to serve food kids will eat. With so little funding for nutrition education, how can they teach kitchen staff how to cook and serve nutritious food that is also appealing?

A food service director at a West Ada school (who wished to remain anonymous) stated that it was appalling how much lettuce and produce they throw away each day. Even while trying to make educated decisions on how much to purchase, so much healthy food is being wasted.

This leaves us questioning where is the balance between schools being responsible for serving healthy food, and parents being responsible for teaching their children how to enjoy and eat nutritious, healthy options?

In part three of School Food and the Obesity Epidemic, we will conclude with an amazing success story showing how one local school implemented delicious food nutrition changes on a small budget. We will also examine how parents can step up and help support healthy food choices for their children and advocate for healthy food in their local schools.