The Frazzled Scribe

Do you know what your kids are eating for lunch? I mean really? Do you know? Or do you just send them in with a dollar every day to purchase lunch from the cafeteria, trusting that they are getting a nutritious meal.

Wake up call people: kids are getting FAT. I don’t mean to be harsh by using the “F” word but it’s a hard reality we all have to learn to face. Kids are getting bigger, more of them are getting diabetes, because of weight gain girls are menstruating early, and all kids who are overweight are at higher risk for heart disease. Now if your child eats three square meals a day, theoretically two of them are consumed in your home. Take a look at those meals too but the focus of my rant is on the Federal School Lunch Program.

Last year I started to pay closer attention to what my children were eating in their school lunch. The menu? Well let’s see…one day they had a breaded chicken patty on a white bread roll with tater tots, a fruit cup and milk. Ok, sounds innocent enough right? Let’s break that down shall we?

Chicken patty = unnecessary simple carbohydrates + it was probably fried when it was made in a factory somewhere + we can never be sure what part of the chicken it’s made out of + it probably has a good deal of sodium = BAD

White roll = simple carbohydrate which = quick spike in blood sugar followed by a crash = BAD

Tater tots = greasy (even if they are baked) + simple carbohydrate + lots of sodium = (You guessed it) BAD.

Fruit cup = little nutritional value + fiber taken away by removing fruit skins + swimming in sugary syrup (simple carbohydrate) = BAD

Milk = the most nutritional part of this meal but it tends to be whole milk. After age 6 or so it’s usually a good idea to get kids off of whole milk. They no longer need it for brain development and it is higher in lactose (milk sugar) and fat.

The Verdict: School lunches are evil!!!

So I decided, as an empowered parent, to do something about it. Now let me tell you that my kids are overweight due to many factors that have nothing to do with the school lunch program (and a couple that do). So my first step was to accept responsibility for the parts of their weight gain that I had control over (cuz, I’m sorry, I’m not apologizing for having the fat gene). For years I fed them McDonald’s and white bread and greasy fried food and Chinese food and every other bad, evil kind of food out there. To alter my children’s future and to give them any reasonable chance of having healthy functioning bodies, I had to change the whole picture, not just their school lunch. But again, the focus is on the lunch, so that’s what I’ll comment on.

This year we decided that we would mostly pack our lunch (I’ll explain the mostly in a minute). To help with my grocery shopping and to keep some resemblance of structure in their lives (they don’t do well with constant change) we decided on themed lunches by day. So we agreed that:

On Monday they’ll get a sandwich
On Tuesday they’ll get a salad
On Wednesday they’ll get a pita pocket
On Thursday they can pack their own lunch
On Friday I will relent and let them have greasy school pizza and whatever else is on the menu

To examine the difference let’s examine my lunch a bit closer…

Yesterday was Tuesday but with the holiday I mistook it for a Monday and packed them sandwiches. My oldest was quite upset but she’ll get over it. So here’s the run-down: a tuna fish sandwich on whole wheat bread, a banana, sugar-free lemonade, and a sugar-free, low-fat chocolate pudding. The breakdown:

Tuna sandwich on wheat = whole wheat bread which = complex carbohydrate AND fiber + tuna which = HIGH protein + low-fat mayo (just 30 calories per tablespoon) = Yummy and Good

Banana = Potassium (hello!) + something sweet to go with the sandwich

Sugar-free lemonade = 8 oz. of the required 64 oz. of water with good flavoring. They still get milk everyday but they get skim milk at home.

Pudding = mid-morning snack which = they aren’t crazy hungry monsters at lunch time + nice calcium boost + no sugar, very low fat = Good kid-friendly snack choice

See the difference? Plus my lunches have no nasty trans fats and they are eating fresh food. Best of all, if you integrate packing lunch into a larger healthier eating plan, it doesn’t cost that much. I make lunch out of stuff that I already have around the house.

To redeem myself today, I made the oldest her blessed salad so today she had a chicken Caesar salad (with Romaine lettuce…a departure since I usually use baby spinach leaves) topped with a whole boneless, skinless chicken breast that was parmesan crusted and grilled, and approximately five whole-wheat croutons. They had pudding again as a snack.

Now why did I go on this rant? To tell you all to watch out for my latest blog which will be debuting in the next few weeks. I am inspired by a lady from Washington named Jennifer McCann who wrote the book Vegan Lunchbox. She has a blog of the same name where she explains and shows pictures of hers, her husband’s and her son’s healthy vegan lunches. I thought to myself…”Self? Wouldn’t it be great to do that for parents who are not vegans?” And thus begins the Lunchbox Revolution! This new blog will actually show you what I am making for my children’s lunch, anything new I find out about nutrition, and other great information about transforming your child’s lunch experience.

My goal? To show others that it’s not so hard to change, it just takes change. Anyhoo…check back in the next week or so for my first lunch post. Viva la lunchbox revolution!!!