Saturday, July 26, 2008
Healthy School Lunch Alternatives
The objective of our blog is to generate options for school districts to consider when looking at school lunches. We are collecting resources from other model schools, investigating challenges that districts have faced, and brainstorming possible solutions for our own school districts.
Finding healthy alternatives to tradtional school lunches is complicated. Too often, school lunches today are filled with processed, pre-packaged foods with little nutritional value. They are often shipped from all over the country which impacts the oil crisis in our country. The foods are often non-harvested, non-organic, and too often non-local.
However, schools are often faced with many dilemmas when trying to incorporate healthy choices into their school lunch program. Students will sometimes make the wrong choices. There are curricular implications to implementing ecological friendly school lunch programs. Integrating healthy choices and examining the implications of unhealthy choices needs to be weaved into our instruction. Additionally there are extensive economic implications in trying to implement such programs. Organic and natural foods are significantly more expensive, which could have impacts on how many people a cafeteria can employ.
Included in our blog are models of exemplary programs that we have found in schools across the country. Many of these schools have found solutions to the challenges of ecologically friendly school lunch programs that we encounter. These programs are varied and unique and include components such as including students in the process, from composting and reducing lunch waste to starting a gardening program.
Finding healthy alternatives to tradtional school lunches is complicated. Too often, school lunches today are filled with processed, pre-packaged foods with little nutritional value. They are often shipped from all over the country which impacts the oil crisis in our country. The foods are often non-harvested, non-organic, and too often non-local.
However, schools are often faced with many dilemmas when trying to incorporate healthy choices into their school lunch program. Students will sometimes make the wrong choices. There are curricular implications to implementing ecological friendly school lunch programs. Integrating healthy choices and examining the implications of unhealthy choices needs to be weaved into our instruction. Additionally there are extensive economic implications in trying to implement such programs. Organic and natural foods are significantly more expensive, which could have impacts on how many people a cafeteria can employ.
Included in our blog are models of exemplary programs that we have found in schools across the country. Many of these schools have found solutions to the challenges of ecologically friendly school lunch programs that we encounter. These programs are varied and unique and include components such as including students in the process, from composting and reducing lunch waste to starting a gardening program.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)