Today I subbed a 2nd grade class of severely disabled kids.
Their snack was microwave popcorn & "whole grain" gold fish.
That was provided by their teacher.
They were also given circular sausage patties & pancakes & apple juice & some graham crackers with corn syrup.
They won't eat the school food so their teacher gives them the popcorn & gold fish.
You get the picture.
Does anyone know of a good way that I/we can help make school lunches & jail food healthier...and a way we can educate parents & teachers about healthy eating?
<ost of the kids were sick with dairhhea, throwing up, spitting up phlegm, etc..and most of them are autistic.

I also teach yoga at the jail and the women there have told me that they are served a loaf of bread every day & not too much else.

What can we do?

[www.farmtoschool.org]

This might help some.

That's shocking!!!

Not sure what country you're from, but a lot of vegetarian organisations will post you leaflets/flyers geared towards veggie-based nutrition (prob. not raw, but balanced-vegan diets), or you could print off PDFs and hand out to the parents. i.e. viva.org.uk have stuff available for download like this:

[www.viva.org.uk]

My mum and dad used to make a packed lunch for me when I was a kid, we didn't have much money so it was usually a sandwich, a chocolate biscuit-type sweet, a bag of crisps and a drink. I would often throw the sandwich in the bin! It's very hard to get kids to eat right. Maybe providing fruit juices might be easier than trying to get them to eat fruits and veg.

Jeni,

I found these videos very inspiring a few weeks ago:

[www.youtube.com]
[www.youtube.com]
[www.youtube.com]

JeniJolt, I don't have much help to offer, but I applaud your efforts. The Washington Post ran an article today on an organization trying to improve meals for "at risk" children. You may be able to find some useful information from the article or directly from the organization.

Wash Post article, At Martha's Table, cooking for a cause: [www.washingtonpost.com]

Martha's Table: [www.marthastable.org]

Good luck!

i think its quite sad that society has reduced itself to feeding its children our future the crap that isnt fit for maggots :/

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

I often read the school menus in my local paper,and it is mostly cheeseburgers,pizza,and various meatloaf dishes.
There is an "alternate" offered in the form of a salad bar.
I think it all boils down to what is cheap,non perishable,and what the kids will eat totally according to their taste buds.

I believe some of us are given the gift of awareness,and some are not.Those who havent,go totally by their taste buds their whole life.Those who have the insight think twice,often to the point of regularly incorporating foods that may not taste all that good,but do a body good.
period.

Vinny



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2010 02:22PM by eaglefly.

The answer to your question is yes. My suggestion is to go to the PTA meetings of the area you are are interested in making a difference in. If you go armed with research, and enough of the parents agree, you should have no problems implementing changes. Beyond that? No one is FORCING children to eat the food at schools. This is a decision that the parents make.

As to the food at jails? You can lobby your local officials to improve the diet - although I tend to think this will not be a big priority on their list! Heh..heh.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

The food they offer our kids is the worst crap there is. I guess parents choose to ignore this. Surprisingly though, when my daughter forgot her lunch, she was able to get some fresh fruit and other healthy choices at school.

Hey! Great to see you here pakd4fun! Hope you and your family are well.

Jeni, here's a program that focuses on getting vegan/vegetarian lunches into the schools: [www.healthyschoollunches.org]

wow that's really sad

if i were teaching i;d tell them to give me a hike in my salary so i could do things like

1) visit farms with the kids
2) teach the kids what is in each fruit and veggie
3) have fun making yummy veggie salads
4) having them come up with their own recipe

okay.. so then.. the kids themselves would REFUSE the foods given to them after they have been ARMED with knowledge awareness and experience

it can't always be the adults who are doing the enforcing and lobbying and
going to meetings and all this and that

get the kids interested

then the kids will take action on their own

if all the kids stopped eating pizza and hamburgers

you bet there will be a change

pronto

as far as the jails go


wow... had no idea that they just get a loaf of bread and not much else

that is pretty sad

considering that they are in jail

i wonder how much lobbying power they have

sad again

hmmmm.... i think i will be a good girl from now on for the rest of my life

cuz i don't want to eat no jail foood!!

uggghh

thanks for teaching them yoga though

that is cool

well... now that i think about it

if they are open to yoga in jails

hey... maybe they could be open to... REAL food in jails?

how about THAT?

A buddy of min was in jail for 6 mos. (NorCal) - he got coffee + toast for breakfast, then white bread sandwiches with 2-3 deli slices + an apple or orange for lunch & dinner. Places outside the produce-belt have it far worse (no produce, period is my understanding). Prisons, like school lunch programs, are a tremdous business with loads of government contracts up for grabs like food, clothing, medical care, etc. And as you can guess, these contracts go to the winning lobbyist: the gigantic agribusiness and franken-foods companies that already have the government in their pocket. There's loads of good documentaries and books on the subject. Morgan Spurlock even did an episode of that "30 days" show on the "business" of the prison system.

Grass roots campaign to start your own introduction of fruit/veg into the systems or bend your local politician's ear. If you're in the SF area I'm down to help =)

CJJ,

The truly horrifying thing about what you are saying is that, as the Appleton Wisconsin project showed, proper nutrition can correct all kinds of pathological behaviors, because so many of them are nutrient deficiencies that adversely affect neurological actions. If you wanted to ensure continued criminality and recidivism, you couldn't do better than to feed prisoners crap that makes their minds chaotic.

Another really bad thing for prisoners' health is cigarette smoke. Even people who don't smoke breathe in massive amounts of 2nd hand smoke all day long.

There's no getting away from it, which is really sad.