Keep Kids Healthy Despite School Lunches

It is not an easy job for parents to ensure that their children are consuming healthy meals throughout the day. Most children will eat at least one meal outside of the home each day, most often a school lunch. Many well-meaning parents believe that a school lunch is healthy, thanks to strict USDA guidelines that require meals to feature vegetables and fruit. However, that is unfortunately not the case. Without direct supervision of your child’s meals, it is possible that they are consuming fat and carbohydrates each day at school.

Vegetable or Pizza?

According to certain guidelines that affect many public schools in the United States, items like small servings of canned tomato sauce on a slice of pizza may count as a vegetable. In an effort to purchase cheaper food for the students in schools across the country, standards are slipping, and this could be affecting your child’s heath if they are eating lunches purchased at their school every day.

Picking and Choosing

To make matters worse, the few vegetables that make it onto the plate are often ignored entirely by students of all ages. Rather that eating the spinach in lasagna or the scoop of applesauce, children stick to their favorite fried and breaded items which contain far less vitamins, minerals and nutritional benefits.

What You Can Do

Thankfully, there are plenty of actions you can take to improve the food in your child’s diet. To start, make sure your child enjoys fruits and vegetables outside of school during the meals he or she eats at home. If possible, pack your child’s lunch each day so you can have peace of mind that your child is consuming healthy foods.

By following these guidelines you can help to improve the health of your child and even help establish healthy eating for yourself, which can encourage weight loss in Phoenix.