School Lunches Are an Important Part of a Child's Day

Lunch helps to fuel our brains and bodies so that we can stay focused and calm throughout the day. The food in our schools here in the South Valley and many areas is still very poor. Many school districts and private schools around the country are now putting the importance back into food. They’ve removed junk food and sodas in vending machines and have replaced them with healthier choices. They have arranged for local ranchers and farmers, or companies like Whole Foods to provide the lunch fare in the school cafeterias.

If you remember in the movie Super Size Me, a boys’ correctional facility did an overhaul of their food program and put in whole real food in their cafeteria. They were pleasantly surprised at the many positive behavior changes that came as a side benefit to eating wholesome food.

Alice Waters is a real hero in bringing the value of sustainable agriculture to schools. She used her same philosophy that she used in her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley where she created menus using only fresh ingredients, harvested in season, and purchased from local farmers. At Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley and at Yale University she has helped the students create gardens, and then manage the gardens to provide a sustainable food source for the school all year long. According to Waters, fast food teaches our children that food is cheap and abundant and that abundance is permanent, that resources are infinite, that eating is about “fueling up” as quickly as possible, that it is available virtually any time of day or night, that meat, French fries and diet Cokes are actually good for you, and that it doesn’t matter where the food comes from or how fresh it is.

What happens when we raise generations that think like this? We create a malnourished, obese, diseased, disposable society that is not taking care of our precious, nutrient depleted land, or the creatures that we share the earth with.

So, I encourage you to begin to improve your family’s health by buying better foods that are locally grown, and then providing healthy lunches for your children and yourself. You will be pleased at how it improves your quality of life.

Enjoy the ideas!