food for thought

A teacher friend mentioned a blog to me, so I checked it out this afternoon. I got hooked, frittered away an embarrassingly large portion of my afternoon, and read the entire thing. It's written by a teacher who has set a goal to eat her school's lunch every single day this school year. She wants to highlight just how lacking in nutrition school lunches can be. Some of the pictures she posts made my stomach turn. Thankfully, my school's lunches are much better than the ones she eats. I still take my lunch from home most every day, mostly because I like to have some control over what I eat. Well, that and a person can only eat so much rectangular pizza with tiny, square pepperoni before the thrill is gone. For the most part, though, my school serves lunches that are more balanced and less processed than the ones Mrs. Q posts about.


Mrs. Q brings up some interesting questions. With so much worry about budget cuts and improving other aspects of education, what can be done about school lunches? How can we get students to take advantage of healthy foods when they are offered? I see this every day. I encourage my students to eat a balanced lunch, but I can't force them to eat their fruits and veggies. I routinely watch my kids walk to their table with a tray containing 2 hot dogs, fries, and a milk. More often than not, they refuse the carrots, broccoli, and apples offered to them. It's easy to say, "Well, it's just one meal during their day." Hopefully, the kids are eating healthier meals at home. Some of them are not. For some students, the school lunch is the ONLY meal they eat during the day.


I know a lot of people would consider this insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I disagree, and it's something that I find both fascinating and frustrating. Here's a link to Mrs. Q's blog: http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/