We all want our kids to eat the best food for them. For some parents, it's the school lunch program. For others, it's a carefully planned lunch they make themselves. But it's always your choice.
Right?
Maybe not. Recently, in North Carolina, a four-year-old's lunch was taken from them (confiscated) by an adult from the school. Apparently, the turkey and cheese sandwich, potato chips, banana and apple juice box did not conform to the USDA guidelines for a healthy meal.
These guidelines require that a sack lunch from home must contain one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain and two servings of either fruit or vegetables.
What did the girl eat instead? Processed chicken nuggets.
As a nutritionist, there are several problems I have with this. First, it is my opinion that if a child brings in a lunch, that's their property and no one can take that away. As parents, it is our right to feed our children the best foods possible.
Secondly, the guidelines take no consideration at all to the numerous health problems found in our schools. It also takes into no consideration the poor quality foods served in most schools.
School districts are allowed to serve greasy pepperoni as a meat. This product has very little quality protein and very high levels of unhealthy fat, salt and preservatives. This can lead to high cholesterol and high blood pressure when eaten often. It's not the only meat served during the week; hot dogs and hamburgers are not high on the health list either.
An excellent meat substitute is tofu, a vegetable based protein that takes on the flavor of what it is cooked with. It can be crumbled in a salad or made into seasoned cubes for finger food. Hummus is also a great vegetable protein made from flavorful chickpea. Dipping veggie sticks or 100% whole grain crackers tastes great.
The next guideline really distresses me. Milk is a low quality food, just barely above white sugar on the nutrition scale. It is a fast growing allergy and a potential cause and exasperator of ADHD. Most children do not digest milk properly, because most of us stop producing the lactase enzyme require to digest milk at about 4 years old. Add to that, the milk served in schools is 2% or skim milk. The healthy calcium and Vitamin D that makes raw milk healthy is destroyed and removed during the pasteurization and homogenization process. Vitamin D is a fat based vitamin and cannot exist in milk without the fat portion. Finally, a Harvard Medical study is now linking factory farmed milk, the stuff your kids are drinking, to hormone dependent cancer. The dangerously high estrone sulfate found in these milk products are linked to cancers of the breast, colon and lymph.
The serving of grain may injure children with gluten intolerance or Celiac's disease. As many as 1 in 33 children are thought to have Celiac's disease and 1 in 3 are gluten intolerant. Symptoms of these diseases are unexplained weight gain or loss, hyperactivity and digestive issues like gas, loose bowel and constipation.
Also, financially distressed schools may choose unhealthy and cheap processed white flour products for their grains rather than healthy 100% whole grains. White flour products are known to raise blood sugar and insulin levels, starting a cycle that leads to Type II Diabetes.
The chemical preservatives found in white flour products and hormone remnants and pesticide residues found in milk also interact with medications for ADHD, allergies and antibiotics. It can negate the medications entirely or make them more aggressive. Several studies have been conducted linking chemical residues to ADHD.
Two servings of fruits and vegetables are good, unless one starts to count a teaspoon of pizza sauce as a vegetable. And that is how the government gets away with serving greasy, pepperoni pizza on a white, sugary crust to your child and calls it complete nutrition.
Is it any wonder that our children cannot recognize what fruits and vegetables look like anymore? Or that over half are overweight? Or that ADHD is now the top problem our schools are facing?
The 'unhealthy' lunch that was taken away from the four-year-old was much healthier than the foods served in the cafeteria. I would improve that lunch with 100% whole grain bread, a cup of organic yogurt with fruit and skip the cheese.
Christina Major is the Naturopathic Doctor and Holistic Nutritionist of Crystal Holistic Health Consulting. Crystal Holistic Health helps people, especially women, who have Type II Diabetes, High Cholesterol and High Blood Pressure lower their numbers, get off medication and increase their energy so they can save money, take back control of their lives and improve the health and happiness of their families. You can get a free report on health at http://www.crystalholistichealth.com/!
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