Comments about ‘Schools offer good foods; getting kids to consume them is difficult’

The official paper of the Canyons District has spoken again this week.

This is yet more of "we've repeated it 1000 times and so you should believe it." Research does not support a low fat, high grain diet. We are not monkeys. The best diet for humans consists of meat(not overly lean), veggies, and a bit of fruit. If you research the topic with diligence, you'll discover this to be true. Portion size is also important to good health as it prevents huge insulin spikes. Good food can be picked, grown, or killed with a spear. The rest is garbage.

Schools should downsize school lunch programs and let parents feed their children. A sack lunch from home is more nutritious and tasty than this processed and unhealthy food used feeding the children. There is no such thing as unhealthy raw food, it's the preparation and cooking methods that's unhealthy. Except of course for the adulteration the food receives as it is grown or raised. Not being able to prepare the foods is no excuse to endanger their health with worse food.

The challenge to nutrition and food for children is the parents abject refusal to prepare meals for their children. What you eat as a child is what you eat as an adult. The art of food preparation in the home has been lost to microwaves and steam packs, all unhealthy foods.

Maybe they should start at the top of school lunch programs by putting chef's and real food preparation specialist in charge. Make experience in food preparation a primary qualification. Nutritionist don't know how to prepare foods so they are the least qualified.

The school lunch programs are out of control trying to please lazy parents, illness, allergies, religions, race, and ethnics, etc.

Would you eat one of those bananas? Or Kiwi that wasn't peeled and sliced? Great picture though...

Don't give them a choice. Put salads and fruit as the only thing on the menu and they will eat it.

Take out the vending machines completely.

There is NO need for them at all.

This really isn't that hard.

Chocolate Milk: Is it really impossible to come up with a new formulation of chocolate milk?! -that say uses something other than corn syrup for a sweetener?! Come on Cream O Weber, and MEadow Gold! Ever heard of the natural zero calorie sweetener Stevia?? I am afraid that it isn't the food scientist holding change back but it's the MBA dude at the dairy corporation who calculated a 2 penny profit reduction if moving away from corn syrup.

I say School Districts, grow a spine! Refuse to accept a product that is not fat free and has close to the same calories as white milk! Maybe the MBA dude will rerun the numbers with quantity=zero and THEN allow for the change!

It's easy - you don't put a desert in your kid's lunch. You don't offer the bag of chips at the school lunch counter.

My school has a grant where fresh fruits and veggies are brought to the classroom twice a week. The kids pretty much eat it all up. Why? Because that is what is available. If they brought in the fruit tray and cheetos, the cheetos would be gone and the veggie tray would remain relatively untouched.

These are CHILDREN, there are certain decisions they are not yet equipped to make, generally speaking. We have to quit making junk an option.

I am a teacher at a public school and do lunch duty three times a week. I get to observe students' eating habits and let me tell you, they are frustrating. The school I work at recently opted to provide lunch through a more glamorous food company, and the company does provide some nice looking and higher quality food. Students have the choice between several types of food and fruits and vegetables. It is absolutely not the school's fault that tudents are overweight or that they eat unhealthy food. I can't tell you how mnay times I have seen students throw away apples, pears, brocoli, bananas, etc....without even touching the food. Quite frustrating. Oh yeah, and kids show up late to school (from a doctor's or dentist's appointment or some other reason) with a bag of McDonald's or Wendy's in their hand. Parents need to take responsibilty for their kids' actions.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

There's no real issue here. Just read the first couple paragraphs and the problem presents itself. It talks about blueberries - good choice - but then says there's whipped cream on them. Why? It talks about what the kids drink, and then says it's chocolate milk, or soda from home. Why? Dessert in the lunchbox. Why?

Here's my kids' lunch, made at home: Ham or peanut butter sandwich, apple with carrot sticks, trail mix or a few chips - not the flavored kind with an ingredient list a mile long - and a 100 percent juice box. No snacks when they get home unless their lunch is finished. They also do not throw their lunch away. And, yes, I know this for a fact.

But then again, adults and kids alike eat that who-know-what's-in-it food at McDonalds and the like because it's cheap. Ever wonder why it sits in your stomach like a brick for hours?

Having been a teacher, I'm quite sure that the kids at school eat just about like they eat at home. Are you listening, Mom?

Why do parents such as orem mom feel the need to have every child be how they feel they should be? This is a free country and we should be free to choose what we want to eat. If you feel a granola bar is good for you -----then by all means eat it, but stop forcing me to eat what you think I should eat. We all don't have to be as beautiful as you orem mom.

I work in the school lunch program in Davis county. I take issue with people saying that lunch programs should be downsized to make parents feed their kids. In a perfect world, that would be possible, but we live in the real world, where parents often times have to work 3, 4, and even 5 jobs to make ends meet. There is a huge number of the 800+ kids that we serve at my school every day whose only full meal is what they get from school lunch, because their parents are working. These kids love the fresh fruit that we offer, but the veggies are another matter. There can be 3 trays on the serve line ready to go, and kids will wait for a tray that doesn't have the veggie du jour. I have to agree with offering fewer fast-food type choices, but, the fact of the matter is that many kids just won't eat, because these are the foods they've been raised on. There are tweaks we can make, remove choices, but the sad fact is that it all starts in the home. That's the biggest hurdle to ending childhood obesity.

Critical Thought and InformedIndepedent are actually dead on.

First, we would be better off eating meat in small amounts, vegetables and fruits. Too much emphasis is placed on fats, carbs and other fad diets, we just need to go back to caveman days (with of course a clean water source) and eat pretty much like that. I have some friends that basically hunt, grow everything they eat, and they are the healthiest people I know.

Bottom line as well is that schools are often the main source of food for our children. Many students rely on the breakfast AND lunch offered by the students. Summer is actually difficult on these students (and parents) because simply their source of food, and any chance of better food, has dried up. Then after that it is fast food land because when both parents work at multiple jobs, that's what is brought home for dinner and fact of the matter, if these kids have these types of jobs (at fast food places), well that's what they are going to be eating as well.

To MAx-Was-Right ---- the reason that any of us should have a say in what you and your children eat is that: This is NOT about LOOKS alone! Generally speaking, WE WILL ALL be paying for it in our society at large, via higher health insurance premiums, heath costs and higher taxes... Obesity and the diseases it causes and the lack of mobility, loss of productivity, etc etc etc are real costs that we will all pay for in one way or another. Here's just one small example:grocery stores spend whata oh... 4-10 thousand on a motorized shopping cart to help a disabled person get around the isles of the store. Now, WHO paid for that cart?!? Answer: ALL of us with a slighty higher price on all the food sold at that store. Can you see that a lower demand for these carts would cost society less?! of course!


"No man is an island, no man stands alone." What you choose to feed yourself is a cause of some of the effects that we all will pay for in some manner.

Schools and parents need to stop pointing fingers at each other, and take responsibility for doing what they can to fix the problem. We all want our children to be healthy, so let's focus on that - not on blame.

I have several children, and for years I have sent them to school with healthy, homemade lunches. My teenage daughter would rather make it herself than eat the school food, because she prefers to eat right. My oldest son, however, would throw away most of the lunch I made and get a school lunch or trade the good food with friends to get the junk food he really wanted.

As long as there is junk food available at school, whether it's provided by the school or the parents, there will always be kids who choose to eat it!

The elementary school our children attended in Ohio had pretty much the kind of lunches that are being criticized. But once a month the PTA, in conjunction with the district lunch program, sponsored a salad bar - lettuce, tomatoes, cukes, cubed turkey, cheese,and other veggies. Parents volunteered to help with it. It was by far and away the kids favorite lunch - and it was good for them. Our daughter could hardly wait for salad bar day.

I think in view of all comments, the current financial difficulties in our schools and coming problems, it is time to 1) send a lunch from home with every kid (yes I know that some parents will not take their responsibilities and will continue to believe that it's okay for society to take over for them), 2) provide a ride or walk their children to school AND home, and 3) let the kids do the cleaning of the rooms and bathrooms before they leave for home.
Don't bother slamming me as I won't be back on this blog in time to be "upset". If we continue to step in and take the parent's responsibility, they will continue to expect it.

Keep our problems in perspective. I recall reading an article by an Indian journalist, whose brother made a tremendous effort to emigrate to the United States.. When he asked his brother why he replied "I want to live where poor people are fat".

@Critical Thought | 3:44 a.m. - Your claim doesn't hold true in the real world. The Japanese, the longest lived people in the world, eat white rice twice a day, plenty of lean fish and vegetables. There isn't much red meat at all in their diets. Westerners who have lived in Japan for decades and eat the same food as the Japanese enjoy lower rates of heart disease and cancer than residents of their native countries. Keio University studied this and released their findings in 2004 if you'd like to read it.

Scandinavians eat plenty of bread and potatoes and have some of the lowest rates of disease and some of the longest life expectancies in Europe. See the CIA World Factbook for statistics.

As for kids' lunches in school. Provide only the most nutritious food available including whole grains, lean protiens and vegetables and leave the processed junk food to the parents to provide at home. We need comprehensive nutrition education in the schools and in our society if we're to overcome our epidemic of obesity. Get those kids running in PE too!