Skip to main content

Family Nutrition: Unveiling of New Standards for School Meals: A Review

I’m a visual person so to start take a look to the right. Today the First Lady, along with Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the first changes to school meal programs in 15 years.  The aim is to clean up some of the high fat, sugary, and salty options that are current in the school system.  The thought is that by providing an extension of healthy options away from home this can help parents who are already working hard to create healthy balanced meals. The changes are said to improve the health and nutrition of 32 million children who utilize the school programs daily.  The staples of the changes will offer both fruits and vegetables at each meal, increase offerings of whole grains, offer low fat and fat free milk products,  as well as focus on calories, portion sizes, saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium.  School meal changes will be implemented within the next three years starting as early as September 2012.  Lunches are expected to change first with breakfasts following. 

When I took a look at the changes above I see significant decreases in overall calories, an increase in fiber, and a focus on low fat dairy products.  As a dietitian, I think this is a very positive step and I am thrilled to see this take place.

Critics are skeptical that French fries are still allowed on the menu and that tomato sauce on pizza is allowed to be counted as a vegetable.  Although I can absolutely see where the critics are coming from, I still see the above as significant changes that can have a very positive effect on our children.  Frankly, this is where you, the parent, come in.  Everybody should learn how to appropriately portion pizza and French fries and fit them into their meal plan.  Focus on portions and complimenting with a vegetable and fruit and don’t allow your kids to get too worked up on “good or bad foods.”  What do you think about the new standards?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Make it Happen

Parents, I see you. I see you putting everyone else's needs in front of yours. I see your dark circles under your eyes, your gray hair, that your wasting away, or that you've collectively gained weight over the years. It's time to put yourselves first because if you don't take care of yourself you won't be around to keep taking care of everyone else. So often friends, acquaintances, or clients say to me, "I don't know how you find the time to exercise." "How can you take the time away from everything else and get away to exercise?" "I wish I could actually focus on myself and exercise." Exercise to me is self care. It produces endorphins faster than any other activity I engage in. It  reduces my stress, keeps me healthy, increases flexibility, and gives me more energy to be on point with my busy kids and my demanding job. My exercise isn't extravagant and it doesn't take too much time. Here's my secret. I always

Why this Dietitian Cares more about your PREbiotics than your PRObiotic Pill

Clients ask me all the time what I think of their brand of probiotic or which one they should start taking.  Studies have shown that probiotic supplements definitely have their place in certain circumstances (that’s a whole other blog for another time), but my bigger concern is... what are you feeding the ones you have already? “Probiotics” is just a fancy word for helpful bacteria.  Even if you don’t take a pill, you have these little guys in your digestive track.  The problem right now is that current probiotic supplements can only include the bacteria that scientists have been able to 1) identify and 2) put in a pill without them dying right away.   However, we (probiotic and non-probiotic users alike) have so many different strains of bacteria (somewhere in the neighborhood of billions) who do so much good for us such as make vitamins and help battle bad bacteria.  BUT - just like us - they need to eat!  A recent study showed that a diet high in protein is not in their

To The Bones- A review from a dietitian

Friday July 14th, Netflix premiered the movie To The Bone.  Prior to the premier many had opinions of the movie. Some were fearful that it would glorify an Eating Disorder, some felt the movie would put too much focus on extremely thin patients with Eating Disorders neglecting those that are within normal weight but still extremely sick, and many had a lot of opinions about the lead actress who lost a significant amount of weight for the role disclosing she is in recovery for an Eating Disorder. My colleagues and I discussed the pretense of the movie, I communicated to families that the movie was coming out in case their daughters and sons watched the movie, and Friday I went home from work and viewed the movie. Although Hollywood has a way of sensationalizing everything there was a lot that the movie got right. The opening scene where Ellen counts the calories as soon as she sees the food is a good depiction of how someone with an Eating Disorder thinks. Food is not sensual it i