Real Food For Healthy Kids

School may be nearing the end for the year, but the changes to the lunch menu in Baltimore County Public Schools are just beginning. You may remember my post last year bemoaning the state of school lunches in the public schools where I live. Things like chicken nuggets and frozen pizza are staples for entrees and children can choose from gummy snacks, chips, even funnel cake for extra items. This is particularly distressing when contrasted to the Baltimore City Public Schools, just a few miles away, where they are doing things with their lunch program that are light years ahead of the county. A group of parents and community members has just formed to help bring healthy change to the Baltimore County Public Schools lunch menu.

The name of the group is the Baltimore County Healthy Kids Coalition and the goals are straightforward:

• Reducing the number of processed-food entrees
• Adding more fresh fruit and veggies to the menus
• Buying local produce, meat and poultry when feasible
• Incorporating healthy-eating lessons into the curriculum

It is exciting to see people coming together for the purpose of improving the nutritional value of the food we feed our children. Providing children with fresh, healthy food and modeling healthy food behavior is the best way to ensure that the future generation will be healthy and have less diet related diseases. Implicitly telling children that it is okay to eat processed food and sugar and salt filled snacks at every meal by making these the principal offerings on the school lunch menu is not modeling healthy food behavior. As a founding member of the Baltimore County Healthy Kids Coalition, I am proud to be one of the voices calling for change.

Won’t you join us?