This guest blog gave me pause to think, and I believe it is something we ALL need to stop and think about. Here’s to showing our love for our kids through food!
“The first time my kids, then ages 8 and 10, came down with a common bug last year I really didn’t think much about it. But then they came down with a second bug, then a third and then pink eye hit! We ate healthy at home. We tried to make sure our kiddos got enough sleep, took their vitamins, and regularly exercised. Why was someone always coming down with something?
One day as I was doing laundry, I found a wrapper from school lunch that one of my kids had left in their pocket (gotta love the treasures you can find in the laundry, right?) I picked the wrapper up and read the label. I was shocked! The amount of added sugar and preservatives made my stomach twist. “This is what my kiddos have been eating in their free lunch all year?” I had originally thought that with finances being so tight that free school lunch was a blessing. Turns out I was wrong. Really wrong.
It suddenly dawned on me that my choice to let my children have free lunch could be tied to their constant illnesses during the school year. It was then that I recalled the previous school year. Finances had not been quite as tight and I had been sending them with a home lunch everyday. It wasn’t anything expensive. It wasn’t anything fancy. In fact, most days it was just a whole-wheat, high-fiber PB&J sandwich with some carrots, a banana or an apple. Now, granted this was no sugar or oil-added peanut butter and homemade no sugar jam, but still is was pretty simple and yet, I remembered them having only ONE bug that entire year! One! And it was just a stomach thing that lasted a few hours at most. No colds, no flu, no pink eye, etc. It was then that I promised myself that no matter how tight finances got, I would find a way to make my kids lunch for school each day.
Since this realization, I have further studied what is actually going into most of our children’s school lunches. I began to see why there was such a stark difference between a homemade whole-wheat sandwich and what the schools are choosing to feed my kids. Every item is filled with loads of meat or meat-like products. There is also tons of dairy, and almost everything is processed food with added sugar, dyes and who honestly knows what else!
I don’t think I fully realized how much sugar our kids are fed until I watched Jamie Oliver’s 2010 Ted presentation. Oliver dumped a wheel barrow full of sugar on the stage that equaled the amount of sugar contained in school lunch milk a child drinks during his elementary school years! My husband and I decided that we will find the means, however small, to send the children with lunch from home every day this year. Even just a simple homemade lunch and water to drink is a big improvement over what most children are “required” to put into their bodies every day at school.
I feel our family cannot actually afford the cost of eating free school lunch. Arming your child with a lunchbox is one of the best and fastest ways to protect your child’s immune system this year. Arm your child with food and love! Pack them a lunch! Someday they’ll thank you for loving them enough to make that choice.” Anonymous
Recent Comments