Fat kids, big government or lazy parents?
When I see overweight kids, it saddens me. I know firsthand what it’s like to be a chubby adolescent – and the insults you hear when you’re a fat kid. I lost 20 pounds the summer between my eighth and ninth grade year. The weight loss was the result of discovering how to control my food consumption and the inspiration of the Olympics to “up” my exercise to a different level (though I was already an active farm kid and a distance runner). Those lessons have stuck with me through the years in trying to maintain a healthy weight.
Now as a mom, I wonder what’s gone wrong when the number of children that are overweight has more than doubled in the past 30 years – there’s now around 17% of American children ages 2-19 that are overweight. We’ve made a few discoveries as the parents of a school-age child, including physical education only being offered half the year every three days due to funding and outside recesses frequently being moved inside when it’s below 30 degrees in the winter. We have a great school system, but one side of the exercise nutrition equation is compromised – just as it is at many schools.
Some of the school lunch treats from our home garden.
Another discovery that surprised us – school lunches are cool to little kids. I have bad cafeteria memories of greasy slop and green goop called peas that I wouldn’t even feed my cows. But the school’s lunch room seemed reasonably O.K. when our little girl started there and even better as it switched to the new USDA standards over the last couple of years, adding fresh fruits and veggies. We’re fortunate enough to be able to afford a combination of packed and school lunches so she experiences both worlds.
Healthy food has always been a very high priority in our household (minus the cheetos that show up on vacation); protein, fruit, vegetable, some form of grains and milk make up most of our meals. So the new USDA nutrtition standards sounded O.K. – they seemed to follow the model we had set. And since the majority of students in our school qualify for the National School Lunch Program, I was glad that kids who may not have enough food would have healthier options.
However, my dietitian friends and then moms of high schoolers started talking about their kids being hungry. What? In all the USDA school lunch standards sat a maximum cap on protein. The government is regulating how much protein kids were allowed to eat. Since when should government dictate what our kids eat in the U.S.? And they’re going to limit flavored milk so the kids could turn to soda? Seems to smell like big government to me – all politics aside. Shouldn’t it be an individual choice or parental right to determine the maximum amounts of certain food types, whether you can afford to pack a lunch or not?
There’s example after example of kids going hungry after eating school lunches – see Sensible School Lunches on Facebook. Many of the blogs below will give you an idea of athletes with headaches and students who can’t focus due to hunger from not getting enough protein. If healthy eating habits is the goal of USDA, let’s teach smart nutritional choices – not limit a vital component of the diet. After all, if the nutrition program is broken, that means both sides of the exercise nutrition equation is now compromised – and we end up with unhealthy kids.
I also have to ask – is it really the government’s job to be mandating nutriton? I haven’t figured out where I stand on that yet, but can tell you that it’s easier to be a lazy parent and let others worry about nutrition. It’s easier to go to McDonald’s than cook a meal after working all day. It’s easier to send kids off to buy the school lunch, not really worry about what’s they’re eating – and have the government regulate them. It’s easier to not teach our children about nutrition and let them eat junk food. But easy isn’t usually the best route.
Helping to plant, weed and harvest this garden gives our child a hands-on nutrition education. Do most kids know where their food comes from or why nutrition is important?
When I asked the lady in charge of our school lunch program about how the new lunch program was going, her greatest concern was the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables in the trash every day. That’s a waste in a country where one in five people face food insecurity. It’s also a waste of opportunity – kids need to care enough to give serious consideration to their food choices and why that food is important to their well-being. Until we can accomplish that, I suspect all the debate is for naught.
Thoughts from moms and dads wanting choice in school lunches:
The Quest for a “Balanced Diet”
School Lunch Soapbox – How to Fix the Problem Without Food
Where’s the Beef? New 2012 School Menus are Lean on Meat
Does Your Child Fit the ‘One Size Fits All” Lunch Program?
If you want to add your voice to the mix, this is a good place to start:
Undersecretary of Food & Nutrition Services
Kevin Concannon
1400 Independence Ave, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20250
Secretary of Agriculture
Tom Vilsack
1400 Independence Ave, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20250
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Michele, thank you for including my post in your list of resources. In answer to your question, I do not think it is the government’s job to mandate nutrition. Offer and suggest nutritious choices? Yes. Set limits on what local schools can feed their students? No.
It’s more complicated than that, I know, but the federal government’s standards may not work for every child. I hope the USDA will use these standards as a good start and a spring board, then take steps to empower parents and local schools to adjust the standards to better serve their communities.
Hi Aimee, thanks for stopping by – glad to share your well researched post. Would tend to agree with your comments. The frustration you’ve seen from the ag community is because we work hard to provide great food choices for people and have an independent streak that points to what you said – more mandates don’t work. I’d love to hear more ideas to empower parents, kids and schools!
Lazy parents have a lot to do with childhood obesity. Michele Obama is on a crusade to reduce the fatness in kids, but she can’t do it alone. Parents have go to get more involved in monitoring the diets of their children. It’s that simple … and fast food joints and processed foods, sugars and starches are best avoided!
There’s a balance, both in helping create a healthier population of students. School lunches can certainly be more nutritious than in the past, parents need to be more engaged in nutrition and there’s room for government to help both parties. Likewise, most registered dietitians advocate for balance in the diet and not limiting kids choices 100% of the time. Fast foods are sometimes the only way we get a meal, but that’s balanced out by exercise and healthy food the rest of the week.
Michele,
Thanks so much for writing this post and for including my “Redefining Breakfast” post as a reference for readers! Nutrition and fitness are so important for our kids, and it is our job as parents to do our “homework” so that we can teach the next generation.
It is discussions like this one that will allow us to effectively combat obesity and instill good health habits into our kids. This is a complex issue and there is no simple answer. I am not in favor of a “one size fits all” federal government school lunch program regulation because I do not believe that it fits the complexity of the issue. I believe that local communities through Physical Education, youth sports programs, and good parenting is a much more effective way to empower our kids to make healthy lifestyle choices.
All the best,
Anne
Always glad to contribute to the discussion – it’s helpful to have so many posts out there to share, such as yours. I’d agree it takes a variety of solutions to fix the problem. That’s even in our own house where we emphasize eating healthy, give thanks during grace for farmers who raise our food and make sure our daughter knows how to monitor when she’s full. One of our 4-Hers did a child development project on the food plate with her this summer, where we discovered our daughter had not heard of the food pyramid or really knew about myPlate.
If one-size-fits-all doesn’t work with cows, it certainly shouldn’t be expected to fit a large population of growing children. Hopefully USDA is hearing us. I suspect there might be an AgChat on this very subject in the near future…
Well, actually, if a kid gets overweight, parents should not blame the kid or themselves. It’s better to find a solution. Choosing words so as not to hurt your little kid is important. My little girl is getting bigger than her friends of the same age; so I tried to persuade her to join my water aerobics class. She asked: “why?”. I told her: “Well, you’re beautiful; you’re even more beautiful if you exercise”. Then she joined the class with me and lost 4 kgs last month.