Little Jimmy isn’t so little. At the age of 11, he already is pushing 150 pounds, and his height hasn’t caught up with his weight.
His mom pampers him with Big Mac’s and stuffed crust pizzas, along with sweetened cereal and sugar-laden soft drinks. He sits in front of the television playing X-box instead of playing a game of basketball with his friends.
On the other hand, little Susie can’t wait to get to school so she can enjoy a hot breakfast of pancakes and syrup. At lunch she eagerly gobbles down the ever-popular turkey and gravy, green beans, mashed potatoes, and rolls, when they are available.
Unlike Jimmy, this may be the only complete and nutritious meal Susie will get for one simple reason: There’s not much food at home.
How do you reconcile two huge problems facing children in America today – obesity and hunger.
It’s the ultimate paradox. On the one hand, nearly five million children in the United States between the ages of 6 and 17 are seriously overweight. Yet, more than half of the students enrolled in Raleigh County schools qualify for free or reduced lunch.
“Sometimes the breakfast and lunch that students receive at school is the only food they get,” one elementary school cook noted recently. “Parents have a hard time paying for utilities and other basic expenses, and they depend on the school system to feed their children. We take this responsibility very seriously.”
Cooks should be praised for their concern for the kids.
Most of the cooks try to make sure the children are well fed on Fridays. When Monday comes, these children are very hungry. “One thing we think about when school is closed: Where are some of our children going to get something to eat?” a cook told me recently.
On the other hand, it’s time to be concerned about the growing problem of obesity in the Mountain State, which has one of the highest rates of obesity among children in the nation.
“The main problem is that children are not eating healthy foods, and they are not as active as they should be,” the brown-eyed school cook continued.
“One of my biggest responsibilities is to make sure that the food they are getting at school during breakfast and lunch is nutritious. We try to encourage students to eat healthy, to eat their fruits and vegetables.”
However, despite the efforts of the school food service, some schools continue to provide students with the opportunity to purchase fruit drinks and snack-food from vending machines. In some places, schools enter exclusive contracts with soft drink companies in exchange for various items, such as sports scoreboards and concession stand supplies.
Some schools in other places have their own fast food restaurants in the schools themselves.
“At one time I thought that we needed to provide foods that imitated fast foods,” the soft-spoken announced. “I thought this would entice students to eat school meals. I soon realized, though, that one of the favorite meals among students today is turkey. The kids even call it ‘Turkey Day,’ so once a month we prepare a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
In today’s fast-paced world students get so much fast food at home, they actually look forward to something else at school, the cooks explained.
“We find that when we have ‘home cooking’ like mashed potatoes and gravy, participation in the school lunch program goes up. Children appreciate and want home-cooked foods because they are eating fast foods all the time.”
In some places in the country, school lunches themselves are under fire. A few years ago, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit organization that promotes preventive medicine through healthy nutrition, presented a report that gave the National School Lunch Program poor marks based upon how well these lunches promote healthy eating habits in children.
The report indicated that most food purchased by schools nationally include high fat, high cholesterol meat and dairy products.
But that is because these schools serve “a la carte meals” and are not participants in the National School Lunch Program under the United States Department of Agriculture, food sources said.
In West Virginia, all counties participate in the National School Lunch Program and must serve foods that meet the regulations for sodium and fat and sugars.
Meanwhile, some five million kids are overweight in our nation’s public schools. Obesity vs. hunger offers challenge
to planners of all school lunch menus
So how can diet experts and food service personnel deal with feeding hungry children and at the same time help overweight children develop better eating habits?
The answer: education.
“We need to involve parents in helping introduce healthy food at an early age,” one middle school cook pointed out. “And parents also need to model healthy eating habits. We can offer kids healthy choices in our food program in the schools, but if they are not offered those same choices at home, it is unlikely that they will choose vegetables and fruit.”
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Top o’ the morning!