These days everyone is concerned about healthy eating especially for their children. A school in Chicago is banning homemade lunches in an attempt to keep some parents from sending unhealthy lunches to school with their children. On the other hand there are other schools that do not offer school lunch at all, but instead advise parents on what to pack for healthy lunches.
Moms Talk: Can Schools Improve Kids Health by Banning Homemade Lunches?
A ban on homemade lunches provides an opportunity to look at our attitudes toward school nutrition services.
By Jeanne GustafsonQuestion: One city will try banning homemade lunches to improve kids’ nutrition and eating choices. What are some of the other ways that schools can influence better eating?
Some of my friends are circulating this Chicago Tribune article about a public school in Chicago banning homemade lunches. Chicago’s solution for the school nutrition conundrum is not a trend, but it brings up a good opportunity to talk about the perpetual hot-potato topic of healthy foods at school.
I’m old enough to remember frantically trying to bake cookies the night before a class party when my daughter was in grade school, only to feel like a failure when I screwed up the recipe—for no-bake cookies, no less—and had to swing by the grocery store to buy prepackaged treats. (Note to those who might be considering making my favorite no-bake cookies—do not use tub margarine because the cookies won’t set.)
Now, there are strict guidelines at most schools and daycares about what type of food can be brought to share with the class. In short, nothing homemade is permitted, because the teachers must be able to clearly discern the ingredients in case of allergies. Less guilt for me, the non-baker, but less fun and more processed food for all the kids’ birthday celebrations.
But still, life was pretty simple a baker’s dozen years ago, as my daughter took school lunch. I didn’t worry too much about the nutrition, except for lamenting her choice to drink chocolate milk every day. She was pretty good about eating the food, with the exception of the green salad. One time I had lunch with her at school, and I have to say that I wouldn’t eat that salad either. It was the mushiest, most dressing-soaked salad I’d ever seen. It also was probably the only “fresh” food on the tray.
Today, my son attends a small French language school in Bellevue, and there is no school lunch. That is a blessing in disguise for parents of somewhat picky eaters who worry about the fruit going in the garbage. My lunches are not nearly as fabulous and creative as those created by MiniBento, a company that recently launched a lunch service for parents of school-age children in Redmond. But we could learn a lot from the French approach to feeding children.
My son’s school, for example, sent home for parents a list of suggestions for packing lunches, which included the simple advice to “grab some protein, a fruit, a vegetable, and a few grains, and call it dejeuner.” It also included a sheet of healthy lunch ideas, such as bow-tie pasta with zucchini and parmesan cheese, paired with fresh fruit, or tortillas with beans and rice along with chips and salsa and pineapple.
Additionally, the teachers in my son’s kindergarten class police what the kids eat. For example, if my child has a dessert in his lunchbox but he also buys a pastry on Friday morning at school, he’s allowed to eat one or the other at lunch, but not both. Candy is not permitted. If it is sent to school, it comes back home untouched at the end of the day, along with whatever he didn’t eat from his lunch, so I can clearly see if he ate the lovingly packed carrots I sent.
In schools in France that serve lunch, children get an education on proper eating at lunchtime just as much as they get an education in arithmetic and world languages during class time. The menus would make your mouth water. In addition, the schools offer suggestions for the evening to parents that serve to help balance out the food groups consumed for the day.
My view is that we would do well to be more mindful about what we are teaching our kids about eating at our schools. I know the schools follow nutritional guidelines, but they often do so in a way that disguises the nutrition in fast-food-looking packages, like tater tots and hot dogs, and it’s often a prepackaged deal. If people want to buy school lunches for their kids, then let’s encourage the school system to provide healthful food, so kids can learn good habits. Let’s encourage them to prepare it fresh instead of processed or purchased in bulk from some distant place.
I’d like to see schools make the chocolate milk a special treat instead of a staple, for example. And I’d like to see school systems nationwide stop undermining school nutrition workers’ efforts with the vending machines in the hallways, even if they do provide some revenue to the school.
I think that Chicago schools shouldn’t ban parental decisions over food, but help parents improve their choices for their children by teaching them about healthful food.
In the meantime, I would also like to thank the schools for saving my son from 12 years of my homemade baking disasters.
