Join me.

I bought wine and I am making brownies.
I think my afternoon is set.

Have a little

School Lunch around the world
This made me think of a post emmabovary made awhile back discussing what children typically eat where she lives and it made me reflect a bit on school lunches I ate growing up and the poor attempts at nutrition.

I think one of the worst things my high school did was install the soda and vending machines. I recall kids having a coke for breakfast at a quarter to eight in the morning. I know a lot of schools give in to vending machines (specifically soda machines) because Pepsi and Coca Cola give money to those schools and when schools are on a tight budget they are willing to sacrifice a few things to have certain programs paid for. Most of the money went to sports programs. There were things like salads offered but most often it would be made up of ice-berg lettuce which isn't exactly a green bursting with nutrition and I have these memories of people drowning the lettuce salads in ranch dressing. There was plenty of pizza and burgers for kids to eat and I suppose it is kind of difficult to break the eating habits that have long been enabled since the first grade. Even the school store in high school sold candy bars, muffins high in fat, calories, and sugar and of course they also sold soda.

I remember reading awhile back that it takes six or seven attempts to get a child to eat something and too often parents give up after one or two attempts. I suppose it is even more difficult to support half-way decent nutrition when parents at home don't offer balanced meals. I am sure it is an equal battle for parents who have soda machines, burgers and fries at school to contend with while they attempt to get their kid to eat spinach.

To set the whole obesity discussion aside for a moment; there are other nutritional issues that are often ignored. Females in particular need a lot of calcium in their adolescent years to ward off osteoporosis in their later years.(it has been shown that you need to get the most calcium before you are thirty) Too many teenaged girls do not get enough calcium. Many skip meals, and drink too many drinks that are high in sugar and it also messes with their metabolism big time. Part of the metabolism being thrown off has a bit to do with the lack of information girls have about their own bodies. Many girls do not know that when they go through puberty that a female is expected to gain 15-30 pounds over a period of two or three years as she is physically turning into an adult. A lot of girls don't know this and all they are aware of is the fact that they are gaining weight without reason which can help kick-start things like eating disorders into gear.

I found it interesting that some schools teach nutrition as part of the national cirriculum. I suppose that might be a step in the right direction in terms of improving the state of health in the United States but if they don't have the support of parents it is kind of an up-hill battle.
The other issue is funding. To support the idea of good nutrition and well-balanced eating you have to throw money at it and at the moment it seems cheaper to some to just give children food that is high in sodium, sugar and fat and lacking in others. But it would be cheaper in the long-run if people invested in good food and good eating habits now instead of paying for poor-health issues later in life.
But people often aren't good at seeing the long-term.