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Health
Matters,
Leslie Bek
Food
for Thought and Learning
Many families struggle
daily to answer the question bellowed from their child peering into
the refrigerator, "What is there to eat?" Imagine answering
that question five days a week throughout the school year for the 1,800
to 2,000 students, kindergarten through twelfth grade, in the Marquette
Area Public Schools. Your answer must meet federal nutritional guidelines
and be appealing to six-year-olds as well as teenagers. Your kitchen
preparation methods also will be monitored for proper sanitation practices
by the local public health department.
Nutrition and learning go hand in hand. Kids who are nutritionally
fit are more likely to have energy, stamina and positive self-esteem
that enhance their ability to learn. Thus, the Michigan Department of
Education mandates that school districts and independent schools take
part in the National School Lunch Program. Schools are then eligible
for cash subsidies and donated commodities from the U.S. Department
of Agri-culture for each meal they serve. In return, they must serve
meals that meet federal nutrition requirements, and they must offer
free or reduced-priced meals to eligible children.
Schools with a certain percentage of their students participating
in the free or reduced-price lunch program also are required to offer
a School Breakfast program. Breakfast was once thought of as a unique
parental responsibility. However, with so many working parents, early
and long bus rides, skipping breakfast isn't simply an issue of feeding
economically needy children.
Research supports the common sense presumption that hungry
children do not learn to their full potential. Breakfast is the key
to a good start every morning. This is especially true for children
because they are growing and changing everyday. Breakfast provides a
vital nutritional boost every morning to get their learning process
going.
Breakfast can help improve memory and positively affects
the tasks that require the retention of new information. A Minnesota
study concluded that children who ate breakfast averaged math grades
almost a whole grade higher than students who rarely ate school breakfast.
(Perhaps the study was conducted in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota?)
Current regulations require schools to meet the Dietary
Guidelines for Americans, which recommend that no more than thirty percent
of an individual's calories come from fat and less than ten percent
come from saturated fat. Regulations also establish a standard for school
breakfasts to provide one-third of the Recommended Daily Allowances
of protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium and calories.
The recommended number of servings per food group varies
for children under or over seven years of age. Nutrition specialists
view the food groups as a pyramid, with the smallest number of servings
at the peak and largest at the base. The pyramid for children over seven
years looks like this: fats, sweets and oils are at the top and are
to be used sparingly; the next layer contains two to three servings
of milk, yogurt or cheese and two to three servings of meat, poultry,
fish or eggs; further down are three to five servings of vegetables
and two to four servings of fruit; the largest food group makes up the
base with six to eleven servings of grains, including pasta, bread and
cereal.
A Food Guide Pyramid for Young Children also was developed
to help improve the diets of young children two to six years old. An
adaptation of the original Food Guide Pyramid was needed because young
children have unique food patterns and needs and many young children
are not eating healthful diets. Changes include shortening the food
group names and using single numbers rather than ranges for numbers
of servings; designing the pyramid to be more understandable and appealing
to young children; and emphasizing the importance of physical activity
by showing young children engaged in active pursuits.
The main focus of the Food Guide Pyramid for Young Children
is on eating a variety of foods from each of the groups. It also de-emphasizes
fat restriction, recognizing that some fats are necessary for early
growth and development. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest
that fat in preschoolers' diets be gradually reduced from their current
levels (thirty-four percent of total calories) to the level recommended
for most people (no more than thirty percent of total calories) by about
five years of age.
The nutritional needs of students of all ages can be met
with careful monitoring of the "combination foods" they normally
like to eat. For example: two slices of a cheese and green pepper pizza
contains servings from the milk group (cheese), the vegetable group
(tomato sauce, green pepper) and grain group (crust).
While school meals must meet federal nutrition requirements,
decisions about which specific foods to serve and how they are prepared
are made by local school food authorities. Food service supervisors
and head cooks plan their menus based on the five food groups. At the
Marquette Area Public Schools that can mean ordering and storing an
enormous amount of food items. One lunch menu offering can require 360
pounds of ground beef, 15 cases of apples and 150 packages of mixed
vegetables. A lunch of spaghetti in the Negaunee School District requires
20 pounds of pasta and 80 pounds of ground beef.
School menus are prepared monthly and calendars are made
available to assist parents with planning family meals. Food service
personnel also must submit the menu, recipes, and nutritional label
information to the School Meals Unit of the Michigan Department of Education
for review, which includes a nutritional analysis.
So the next time someone at your house asks, "What's
for dinner?" you can be thankful knowing that your children's schools
have done their part for two thirds of the day. I know that I am especially
thankful that 1,800 children are not at my table!
Note: For more information on children's nutrition, contact the USDA
Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at www.usda.gov/cnpp.
—Leslie Bek
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