Eating the right foods has tremendous importance to the development of all types of health in children. Kids fed healthier meals are healthier physically, emotionally, and mentally, do better in academics and other aspects of their lives, and are better set up to become healthier adults. Because many kids eat at least a meal a day at school for three-quarters of the year, what schools serve is of utmost importance.
Now that it has been recognized that poor-quality meals are harming our children’s health, there are many people demanding healthier meals at schools. Despite this, there any many schools out there that still serve hamburgers, pizza, or other unhealthy offerings on a daily basis. Expecting young children to know how often they should eat these foods, and exercise the self-control to limit their intake is unrealistic and dangerous.
Even after accounting for the fact that all kids would rather eat pizza than vegetables, there are some schools at which it really isn’t an option. Poor quality vegetables or no vegetables are often the only choices. This is largely because good-quality vegetables are expensive, and the schools contract out for cheap meals because they do not have large budgets. Making high-quality vegetables more available needs to become a priority at our schools.
Some people have expressed concerns that kids would not eat the healthier fare, if faced with it. These concerns appear to be mostly unfounded, as several schools that have made drastic changes to their menus have not faced much reluctance from their students. Most children will happily eat healthier items, as long as they look appetizing and are made from good ingredients.
Because poor-quality food often satisfies desires for fats, sugars, salt, or more than one of these things, people will often eat them even though they do not look particularly appetizing. When serving healthier fare, good quality food that looks appetizing must be utilized. And keeping the general preferences of children in mind helps, too. Many kids won’t eat a salad, but would eat a turkey burger or a vegetable lasagna.
The efforts to ban some items from schools, like soft drinks or candy, have been much more successful than the efforts to remove the pizza and hamburgers. This is largely because the soft drinks and candy can just be eliminated, while the pizza and hamburgers would have to be replaced. Making a menu change at schools often involves hiring a whole new company to cater it, which is problematic in several ways.
Most public schools contract out to a major food supplier for their meals. They cannot afford to pay very well, and these food companies respond by offering cheap, poor-quality items. Contracts for healthier foods are available, if much rarer, but they often command prices that the schools cannot afford to pay. Food budgets need to increase, or cheaper health food needs to become available, before things will be easily changed.
Parents are pushing more and more for schools to serve healthier offerings. But until schools are able to do these things cheaply, or receive an increased budget for foods, it is unlikely to become a reality. Luckily, there is also an increasing industry in serving healthier foods at schools, so perhaps their cheaper availability will become widespread soon.
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