Recipe for Student Health and Success
GoodSchoolFood.weebly.com
When I was a kid, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge meant paying a toll each way. For decades traffic slowed (or stopped) morning and night, every workday. Then, because 30 years is enough time to think things through, a light bulb went on in the Bridge Authority and they realized they could slow traffic down in only ONE direction each day, and charge double, because those people would go HOME at night! http://www.goldengatebridge.org/research/facts.html#OneWayToll
What else is right in front of our noses but we won’t notice for 30 years?
For instance, is there some hidden cause for the decline in SAT scores, and the far higher rate of absences, retention, violence, and vandalism? http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4143 Could school meals have anything to do with it? Dr. Alexander Schauss thinks so, he found that whenever prisons or juvenile halls improved nutrition, there was up to 75% less violence, theft, and other antisocial behavior. http://www.mwsc.edu/psychology/research/psy302/fall95/clark.htm It’s time to see the obvious: when it comes to school food “garbage in, garbage out.”
Pellegra
To fix school meals, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The story of pellagra has a lot to teach us. First reported in 1902, pellagra was known for the “4 D’s”: dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death. At least 100,000 died, and thirty times that many suffered but survived. Three decades in, one researcher showed that it was not an infectious disease but resulted from deficiencies. Another 10 years went by before the FDA required white flour to be fortified with B vitamins, which finally ended the epidemic. pbs.org\wgbh\aso\databank\entries\dm15pa.html
The New Pellegra
In the 1980’s, Dr. Don Rudin called a constellation of problems “neo-pellagra.” As a department head at a psychiatric institute, he designed a pilot study that gave 44 patients a nutritious diet plus omega-3s in the form of flax oil or fish. The subjects had a variety of physical problems like eczema and allergies, and mental problems, including schizophrenia, depression, and agoraphobia, all of which responded dramatically to the regimen.
http://www.althealth.co.uk/services/info/supplements/Omega3.php
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/homegym/omoilpracgui.html
While B vitamins were the missing link in the earlier pellagra, this time around it was essential fatty acids called omega-3s that were missing. What are omega-3s, you may wonder. They are called essential because we cannot make them from other oils and fats we consume. However, omega-3s are very hard to find in the modern diet, and trans fats are a big reason why.
Trans Fats
Lately, trans fats are notorious because they are now banned in New York City, but food activists have been opposing trans fats for years. Next time you’re in the supermarket, juggle five 1-pound cans of Crisco in your arms. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, that’s how much trans fat the average American eats in a year! That’s 6.21 grams per day, which seems low when you consider that a person eating one doughnut for breakfast (3.2 g) and a large order of French fries for lunch (6.8 g) would ingest 10 g of trans fatty acids.
Of course, someone on a junk food diet (think: teenager) would be consuming 15 to 20 grams a day of trans fat! For total fat calories eaten per day, the average American consumes the equivalent of a whole stick of butter each day. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/reviews/transfats.html
This is why it’s such good news that the New York City ban on trans fats has many copy cats, including Universal Studios and Disney. Yet, oddly enough, the USDA’s $9 billion dollar school breakfast and lunch program still serves pudding and “healthy” donuts, and more, that contain trans fats, despite the fact that the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Health says there is no safe level of trans fats. http://www.nationalacademies.org/headlines/20061212.html
The Missing Omega-3s
Omega-3s are scarce in the American diet not only because beef is no longer grass-fed, people eat less fish and greens, but also because the trans fats in so many processed foods cancel omega-3s. https://www.bcbsri.com/BCBSRIWeb/about/newsroom/mag/harvardspecialsu2003.jsp
We’ve all heard about the new epidemics of obesity, asthma, allergies, ADD, and diabetes in America’s school children. It began small 30 years ago but is now at emergency levels. True, many of my students function better because of Ritalin and inhalers, but they weren’t born with a deficiency of Ritalin or epinephrine.
Could it be that these ailments are far more prevalent now because our food has changed? As a matter of fact, according to Dr. Artemis Simopoulos, M.D., who headed the NIH Nutrition Committee for nine years, 90% of Americans are omega-3-deficient. Kids with asthma and allergies typically have lower plasma levels of omega-3s, as do many kids with ADD. Since all those problems are greatly helped by omega-3s, shouldn’t we increase omega-3 foods in the schools?
To add to the complexity of the problem, it turns out that the ratio between omega-3s, (important for IQ, vision, and immunity) and omega-6s is another factor we must consider. We evolved on a natural diet that ranged from 1:1 on up to 1:4 in the ratio between omega-3s (found in grass-fed beef and fish) and omega-6s (found in corn, safflower, sunflower, and cottonseed oil). Now the American diet has a ratio more like 1:15 or even 1:20. The opportunity cost of using corn oil is that any tiny amount of omega-3s that Americans might consume will be overwhelmed by the 6s. That’s why olive oil, low in both 3s and 6s, has been helpful, since it keeps the ratio closer to the ideal. The World Health Organization recommends a ratio of 3s to 6s of no more than 1:10. Sweden recommends a ratio of 1:5, and Japan recently lowered its recommendation from 1:4 to 1:2.
Where Is the FDA?
Beyond that, you may ask, why hasn’t the FDA set a Recommended Daily Allowance for omega-3s? Maybe because if they did then the USDA school meal program would have to insure that kids got them. Two years ago, the Office of Management and Budget urged the Department of Health and Human Services and Agriculture to revise the nation's dietary guidelines to say that omega-3 fatty acids can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, while trans fatty acids may increase the risk. So far, no change. http://www.udoerasmus.com/articles/misc/n3_transfats_usgovt.htm
Recently, consumers have forced food manufacturers to give up trans fat even though it has a fantastic shelf life. But food processors will fight fiercely to keep omega-3s off the list of essential nutrients because foods made with them have a very short shelf life.
Some School Districts Ahead of the Curve
There has been some progress: Years before New York City banned those trans fats, North Caroline took them out of school meals. Nutrition in School Food Program Section 7.29.(a) G.S. 115C-264 Meanwhile, in Texas twenty-eight school districts now serve enchiladas and nachos enriched with the “good guy” omega-3s extracted from sardines. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040120/datu028_1.html Maybe California will catch up with North Carolina and Texas!
Sodas
The average teen drinks at least two 12-ounce sodas a day, that’s 300 calories! http://www.mercola.com/2005/jun/14/calories_america.htm Tufts University researchers found that the average American consumes 120 pounds of sugar a year, which is 600 calories a day from sugar. http://www.spineuniverse.com/displayarticle.php/article1149.htm Yup, that means the average kid gets half their empty calories from sodas! It’s good that California finally banned access to soda machines during school hours.
Sugars
Besides the lack of omega-3s and excess trans fat, food in schools is plagued by high amounts of corn syrup and other sugars. Food containing this high fructose corn sweetener can legally be called “all natural.” While raisins are really natural, mixing a cheap sweetener with white flour and hydrogenated fat makes a nonfood that can be advertised as “all natural.” You know corn syrup is cheap but did you know that it stimulates the brain’s opiate receptors? That’s why food processors like to put it in as many foods as possible. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15962882&dopt=Citation
It’s Not Just In Sodas
But corn syrup is not only in sodas. Our consumption of corn syrup has risen 250% in the past 15 years because it’s in just about anything that is sweetened. A new study http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=180216 links the sharp rise of diabetes to the growing consumption of refined carbohydrates. Another study links trans fats to diabetes. http://www.mendosa.com/transfat.htm So our kids are getting a double whammy, namely, corn syrup and hydrogenated oils. No wonder diabetes in children has tripled in ten years. https://www.healthforums.com/library/1,1277,article~10245,00.html
Corn syrup is the third ingredient of the frosted cereal the cafeteria gives my students for breakfast, after the flour (which is first), and regular sugar (which is second)! The national school lunch program was created to prevent the high level of poor health found in military draftees for WWII, but now it is part of the problem, helping to cause the poor health that we all pay for in the higher cost of education and health care, and lower productivity, not to mention the cost of crime and addiction.
John Hoebel, a psychologist at Princeton University, is researching whether it is possible to become dependent on the natural opioids released from eating a large amount of sugar. Along with a team of physiologists from the University of the Andes in Venezuela, Hoebel recently showed that rats fed a diet containing 25 per cent sugar are thrown into a state of anxiety when the sugar is removed. Their symptoms include chattering teeth and the shakes—similar, he says, to those seen in people withdrawing from nicotine or morphine. http://banzhaf.net/docs/newsci.html Is it realistic to think that a few “five a day” posters on the cafeteria walls will convince kids to choose veggies over the sugary options? Why not simply require that all calories on school campuses be healthy calories?
Food Additives Cause ADD
In a review of two dozen scientific studies, the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) contends that food dyes and certain foods can adversely affect children’s behavior. The 32-page report titled “Diet, ADHD, and Behavior” charges that federal agencies, professional organizations, and the food industry are ignoring evidence that diet affects behavior. http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=3
Pesticides Cause ADD
Research has implicated pesticides and exposure to low levels of industrial chemicals that may interfere with hormones, especially thyroid. Pages 53, 59 at http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=2
While 90% of U.S. children have detectable residues of at least one organophosphate pesticide in their bodies, little is known about their effects on the developing brain. In the laboratory, a single low-level exposure to an organophosphate pesticide or a pyrethroid at day 10 of life causes permanent changes in the brain and hyperactivity of rodents. Environmental contaminants—recognized as risk factors for learning and developmental disabilities— are found in disproportionate numbers of people in the juvenile and criminal justice system. http://www.panna.org/resources/gpc/gpc_200308.13.2.09.dv.html
Lessons from Anti-Tobacco Campaign
We can learn a lot from the anti-tobacco movement. After our nation hit the tipping point, not only were existing laws that prevented minors from buying cigarettes more effectively enforced, but new laws were passed to ban smoking from public places. New curricula with the anti-tobacco message were added. Beyond that, state governments sued Big Tobacco when the health fallout of cigarettes overwhelmed the medical system and tax dollars were footing a large part of the bill.
Similarly, now that some states and school districts are improving nutrition beyond the USDA standards, it won’t be long before state governments turn their lawyers towards Big Junk Food.
What’s Served at Schools
But isn’t an ounce of prevention better than a pound of cure? Adults need to ignore the cries of junk food addicted children and sweep the corn syrup and trans fats entirely out of school campuses, which would automatically increase the consumption of fruits and veggies.
In case you thought cafeteria food was nutritious, drop by your neighborhood public school at breakfast or lunchtime. Besides the “healthy” donuts and pudding that contain both corn syrup and trans fats, school meals count potatoes and corn, which every adult knows are nearly pure starch, as vegetables.
Sure, the kids can choose salad, but two heads of iceburg lettuce are all that’s needed per day for all 350 kids at my school, and most of that is left behind. And the kids can choose fresh fruit, but when the salad bar has canned fruit swimming in sugar syrup, guess what they take?
In other words, when kids have nothing to go on but their years of watching TV commercials and the all-too-human desire for sweetness, it’s no wonder that they choose the worst foods in the cafeteria.
My district food service says meals are better now. True, kids are no longer served Sunny Delight (which contains only 2% real fruit juice plus a lot of corn syrup). Plus, nowadays the fresh fruit is actually ripe. But we must do a lot more.
Follow the Leader
Beyond cutting out the junk and increasing veggies and fruits, our kids also deserve to get the omega-3s that Americans once ate on a routine basis. Consider what’s really possible. Seven years ago, in Appleton, Wisconsin, the alternative high school, serving a hundred “at risk” youth, was transformed overnight. Out went the soda machines, salty fried snacks, and cookies. Bottled water became the main beverage. Salads, whole grain bread with added flax meal, casseroles and soups, and smoothies were the new fare.
For the last seven years, there have been no guns or drugs on campus and no dropouts or expulsions! Super Size Me
Two years ago, the entire district –- 15,000 kids in 24 schools -– adopted the healthier meal plan. Over these two years, the Appleton district has saved $5 million in operations costs as a result of less vandalism and graffiti, and other savings. http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4143, Greg Bretthauer at [email protected]
In my second grade classroom we had our own Fear Factor when I showed my students that I could eat omega-3-rich sardines -- scales, guts, bones and all! Half of them begged for a taste. With their parents’ permission, they could have sardines every day for snack and often asked for seconds and thirds! (Humans have eaten sardines for millennia and I prefer them over tuna because sardines are much lower on the food chain and therefore have practically no mercury or dioxin contamination.) http://alt-health.weebly.com/sardines.html
Recipe for Student Health and Success
It took 30 years to speed up rush hour across Bay Area bridges. Now it’s time to reverse 30 years of steady decline in school food. Can we afford to ignore this information another day? To solve our social and environmental problems, we’re going to need all the healthy, smart citizens we can grow. Following seven heretofore overlooked criteria for school food would bring dramatic results in student behavior and achievement, leading to vast ripple effects in the wider community like reduced health care costs, lower crimes rates, higher productivity:
Buena Salud,
Lauren Ayers
San Rafael
four one five 454-5454
GoodSchoolFood.weebly.com
When I was a kid, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge meant paying a toll each way. For decades traffic slowed (or stopped) morning and night, every workday. Then, because 30 years is enough time to think things through, a light bulb went on in the Bridge Authority and they realized they could slow traffic down in only ONE direction each day, and charge double, because those people would go HOME at night! http://www.goldengatebridge.org/research/facts.html#OneWayToll
What else is right in front of our noses but we won’t notice for 30 years?
For instance, is there some hidden cause for the decline in SAT scores, and the far higher rate of absences, retention, violence, and vandalism? http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4143 Could school meals have anything to do with it? Dr. Alexander Schauss thinks so, he found that whenever prisons or juvenile halls improved nutrition, there was up to 75% less violence, theft, and other antisocial behavior. http://www.mwsc.edu/psychology/research/psy302/fall95/clark.htm It’s time to see the obvious: when it comes to school food “garbage in, garbage out.”
Pellegra
To fix school meals, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The story of pellagra has a lot to teach us. First reported in 1902, pellagra was known for the “4 D’s”: dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death. At least 100,000 died, and thirty times that many suffered but survived. Three decades in, one researcher showed that it was not an infectious disease but resulted from deficiencies. Another 10 years went by before the FDA required white flour to be fortified with B vitamins, which finally ended the epidemic. pbs.org\wgbh\aso\databank\entries\dm15pa.html
The New Pellegra
In the 1980’s, Dr. Don Rudin called a constellation of problems “neo-pellagra.” As a department head at a psychiatric institute, he designed a pilot study that gave 44 patients a nutritious diet plus omega-3s in the form of flax oil or fish. The subjects had a variety of physical problems like eczema and allergies, and mental problems, including schizophrenia, depression, and agoraphobia, all of which responded dramatically to the regimen.
http://www.althealth.co.uk/services/info/supplements/Omega3.php
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/homegym/omoilpracgui.html
While B vitamins were the missing link in the earlier pellagra, this time around it was essential fatty acids called omega-3s that were missing. What are omega-3s, you may wonder. They are called essential because we cannot make them from other oils and fats we consume. However, omega-3s are very hard to find in the modern diet, and trans fats are a big reason why.
Trans Fats
Lately, trans fats are notorious because they are now banned in New York City, but food activists have been opposing trans fats for years. Next time you’re in the supermarket, juggle five 1-pound cans of Crisco in your arms. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, that’s how much trans fat the average American eats in a year! That’s 6.21 grams per day, which seems low when you consider that a person eating one doughnut for breakfast (3.2 g) and a large order of French fries for lunch (6.8 g) would ingest 10 g of trans fatty acids.
Of course, someone on a junk food diet (think: teenager) would be consuming 15 to 20 grams a day of trans fat! For total fat calories eaten per day, the average American consumes the equivalent of a whole stick of butter each day. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/reviews/transfats.html
This is why it’s such good news that the New York City ban on trans fats has many copy cats, including Universal Studios and Disney. Yet, oddly enough, the USDA’s $9 billion dollar school breakfast and lunch program still serves pudding and “healthy” donuts, and more, that contain trans fats, despite the fact that the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Health says there is no safe level of trans fats. http://www.nationalacademies.org/headlines/20061212.html
The Missing Omega-3s
Omega-3s are scarce in the American diet not only because beef is no longer grass-fed, people eat less fish and greens, but also because the trans fats in so many processed foods cancel omega-3s. https://www.bcbsri.com/BCBSRIWeb/about/newsroom/mag/harvardspecialsu2003.jsp
We’ve all heard about the new epidemics of obesity, asthma, allergies, ADD, and diabetes in America’s school children. It began small 30 years ago but is now at emergency levels. True, many of my students function better because of Ritalin and inhalers, but they weren’t born with a deficiency of Ritalin or epinephrine.
Could it be that these ailments are far more prevalent now because our food has changed? As a matter of fact, according to Dr. Artemis Simopoulos, M.D., who headed the NIH Nutrition Committee for nine years, 90% of Americans are omega-3-deficient. Kids with asthma and allergies typically have lower plasma levels of omega-3s, as do many kids with ADD. Since all those problems are greatly helped by omega-3s, shouldn’t we increase omega-3 foods in the schools?
To add to the complexity of the problem, it turns out that the ratio between omega-3s, (important for IQ, vision, and immunity) and omega-6s is another factor we must consider. We evolved on a natural diet that ranged from 1:1 on up to 1:4 in the ratio between omega-3s (found in grass-fed beef and fish) and omega-6s (found in corn, safflower, sunflower, and cottonseed oil). Now the American diet has a ratio more like 1:15 or even 1:20. The opportunity cost of using corn oil is that any tiny amount of omega-3s that Americans might consume will be overwhelmed by the 6s. That’s why olive oil, low in both 3s and 6s, has been helpful, since it keeps the ratio closer to the ideal. The World Health Organization recommends a ratio of 3s to 6s of no more than 1:10. Sweden recommends a ratio of 1:5, and Japan recently lowered its recommendation from 1:4 to 1:2.
Where Is the FDA?
Beyond that, you may ask, why hasn’t the FDA set a Recommended Daily Allowance for omega-3s? Maybe because if they did then the USDA school meal program would have to insure that kids got them. Two years ago, the Office of Management and Budget urged the Department of Health and Human Services and Agriculture to revise the nation's dietary guidelines to say that omega-3 fatty acids can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, while trans fatty acids may increase the risk. So far, no change. http://www.udoerasmus.com/articles/misc/n3_transfats_usgovt.htm
Recently, consumers have forced food manufacturers to give up trans fat even though it has a fantastic shelf life. But food processors will fight fiercely to keep omega-3s off the list of essential nutrients because foods made with them have a very short shelf life.
Some School Districts Ahead of the Curve
There has been some progress: Years before New York City banned those trans fats, North Caroline took them out of school meals. Nutrition in School Food Program Section 7.29.(a) G.S. 115C-264 Meanwhile, in Texas twenty-eight school districts now serve enchiladas and nachos enriched with the “good guy” omega-3s extracted from sardines. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040120/datu028_1.html Maybe California will catch up with North Carolina and Texas!
Sodas
The average teen drinks at least two 12-ounce sodas a day, that’s 300 calories! http://www.mercola.com/2005/jun/14/calories_america.htm Tufts University researchers found that the average American consumes 120 pounds of sugar a year, which is 600 calories a day from sugar. http://www.spineuniverse.com/displayarticle.php/article1149.htm Yup, that means the average kid gets half their empty calories from sodas! It’s good that California finally banned access to soda machines during school hours.
Sugars
Besides the lack of omega-3s and excess trans fat, food in schools is plagued by high amounts of corn syrup and other sugars. Food containing this high fructose corn sweetener can legally be called “all natural.” While raisins are really natural, mixing a cheap sweetener with white flour and hydrogenated fat makes a nonfood that can be advertised as “all natural.” You know corn syrup is cheap but did you know that it stimulates the brain’s opiate receptors? That’s why food processors like to put it in as many foods as possible. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15962882&dopt=Citation
It’s Not Just In Sodas
But corn syrup is not only in sodas. Our consumption of corn syrup has risen 250% in the past 15 years because it’s in just about anything that is sweetened. A new study http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=180216 links the sharp rise of diabetes to the growing consumption of refined carbohydrates. Another study links trans fats to diabetes. http://www.mendosa.com/transfat.htm So our kids are getting a double whammy, namely, corn syrup and hydrogenated oils. No wonder diabetes in children has tripled in ten years. https://www.healthforums.com/library/1,1277,article~10245,00.html
Corn syrup is the third ingredient of the frosted cereal the cafeteria gives my students for breakfast, after the flour (which is first), and regular sugar (which is second)! The national school lunch program was created to prevent the high level of poor health found in military draftees for WWII, but now it is part of the problem, helping to cause the poor health that we all pay for in the higher cost of education and health care, and lower productivity, not to mention the cost of crime and addiction.
John Hoebel, a psychologist at Princeton University, is researching whether it is possible to become dependent on the natural opioids released from eating a large amount of sugar. Along with a team of physiologists from the University of the Andes in Venezuela, Hoebel recently showed that rats fed a diet containing 25 per cent sugar are thrown into a state of anxiety when the sugar is removed. Their symptoms include chattering teeth and the shakes—similar, he says, to those seen in people withdrawing from nicotine or morphine. http://banzhaf.net/docs/newsci.html Is it realistic to think that a few “five a day” posters on the cafeteria walls will convince kids to choose veggies over the sugary options? Why not simply require that all calories on school campuses be healthy calories?
Food Additives Cause ADD
In a review of two dozen scientific studies, the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) contends that food dyes and certain foods can adversely affect children’s behavior. The 32-page report titled “Diet, ADHD, and Behavior” charges that federal agencies, professional organizations, and the food industry are ignoring evidence that diet affects behavior. http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=3
Pesticides Cause ADD
Research has implicated pesticides and exposure to low levels of industrial chemicals that may interfere with hormones, especially thyroid. Pages 53, 59 at http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=2
While 90% of U.S. children have detectable residues of at least one organophosphate pesticide in their bodies, little is known about their effects on the developing brain. In the laboratory, a single low-level exposure to an organophosphate pesticide or a pyrethroid at day 10 of life causes permanent changes in the brain and hyperactivity of rodents. Environmental contaminants—recognized as risk factors for learning and developmental disabilities— are found in disproportionate numbers of people in the juvenile and criminal justice system. http://www.panna.org/resources/gpc/gpc_200308.13.2.09.dv.html
Lessons from Anti-Tobacco Campaign
We can learn a lot from the anti-tobacco movement. After our nation hit the tipping point, not only were existing laws that prevented minors from buying cigarettes more effectively enforced, but new laws were passed to ban smoking from public places. New curricula with the anti-tobacco message were added. Beyond that, state governments sued Big Tobacco when the health fallout of cigarettes overwhelmed the medical system and tax dollars were footing a large part of the bill.
Similarly, now that some states and school districts are improving nutrition beyond the USDA standards, it won’t be long before state governments turn their lawyers towards Big Junk Food.
What’s Served at Schools
But isn’t an ounce of prevention better than a pound of cure? Adults need to ignore the cries of junk food addicted children and sweep the corn syrup and trans fats entirely out of school campuses, which would automatically increase the consumption of fruits and veggies.
In case you thought cafeteria food was nutritious, drop by your neighborhood public school at breakfast or lunchtime. Besides the “healthy” donuts and pudding that contain both corn syrup and trans fats, school meals count potatoes and corn, which every adult knows are nearly pure starch, as vegetables.
Sure, the kids can choose salad, but two heads of iceburg lettuce are all that’s needed per day for all 350 kids at my school, and most of that is left behind. And the kids can choose fresh fruit, but when the salad bar has canned fruit swimming in sugar syrup, guess what they take?
In other words, when kids have nothing to go on but their years of watching TV commercials and the all-too-human desire for sweetness, it’s no wonder that they choose the worst foods in the cafeteria.
My district food service says meals are better now. True, kids are no longer served Sunny Delight (which contains only 2% real fruit juice plus a lot of corn syrup). Plus, nowadays the fresh fruit is actually ripe. But we must do a lot more.
Follow the Leader
Beyond cutting out the junk and increasing veggies and fruits, our kids also deserve to get the omega-3s that Americans once ate on a routine basis. Consider what’s really possible. Seven years ago, in Appleton, Wisconsin, the alternative high school, serving a hundred “at risk” youth, was transformed overnight. Out went the soda machines, salty fried snacks, and cookies. Bottled water became the main beverage. Salads, whole grain bread with added flax meal, casseroles and soups, and smoothies were the new fare.
For the last seven years, there have been no guns or drugs on campus and no dropouts or expulsions! Super Size Me
Two years ago, the entire district –- 15,000 kids in 24 schools -– adopted the healthier meal plan. Over these two years, the Appleton district has saved $5 million in operations costs as a result of less vandalism and graffiti, and other savings. http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4143, Greg Bretthauer at [email protected]
In my second grade classroom we had our own Fear Factor when I showed my students that I could eat omega-3-rich sardines -- scales, guts, bones and all! Half of them begged for a taste. With their parents’ permission, they could have sardines every day for snack and often asked for seconds and thirds! (Humans have eaten sardines for millennia and I prefer them over tuna because sardines are much lower on the food chain and therefore have practically no mercury or dioxin contamination.) http://alt-health.weebly.com/sardines.html
Recipe for Student Health and Success
It took 30 years to speed up rush hour across Bay Area bridges. Now it’s time to reverse 30 years of steady decline in school food. Can we afford to ignore this information another day? To solve our social and environmental problems, we’re going to need all the healthy, smart citizens we can grow. Following seven heretofore overlooked criteria for school food would bring dramatic results in student behavior and achievement, leading to vast ripple effects in the wider community like reduced health care costs, lower crimes rates, higher productivity:
- Ban trans fats
- Cut out corn syrup and reduce sugar of all other types
- Include omega-3s, especially EPA and DHA
- No longer count corn, potatoes, or catsup as “vegetables”
- Reduce the omega-6 oils (corn, safflower, etc.) so that the ratio of 3s to 6s is healthier
- Ban cottonseed oil, which is loaded in pesticide residues because cotton is considered a fiber crop not a food crop
- Cut out artificial colors and flavors
Buena Salud,
Lauren Ayers
San Rafael
four one five 454-5454