This year the San Diego Unified School District has decided
to implement “Meatless Mondays” in the elementary schools. I know many people that do “Meatless Mondays”. Essentially you don’t eat meat on Mondays and
instead replace it with vegetable substitutes.
The reasoning behind this is that by getting kids to do this at a young
age will help to teach them better nutrition habits. And in a world where childhood obesity is on
a sharp rise I have to applaud them in the effort. However, replacing one meal at school a week
with no meat doesn’t do much for the actual diets of kids. These diets need to be enforced at home as
well. It seems as though the city has
taken on a position of raising the kids vice letting the parents do it. On the news it was reported that the schools
had veggie burgers, and various other wonderful vegetable dishes (I can’t
believe I just said wonderful vegetables), but they also had cheese pizza. So now you’ve taken an idea that is supposed
to be healthier and thrown pizza into the mix.
News Flash!!!! Just because you
take the pepperoni off of a pizza does not all of a sudden make it
healthy. I am all for children learning
proper nutrition. I, for one, subscribe
to the Paleo, or caveman, diet. In this
diet you cut out all the processed foods that are commonplace in this day and
age and only eat things that you can grow or kill. Since I’ve been doing it, I have felt a lot
better and managed to lose weight rather quickly, but children won’t be rushing
to their parents saying that they can’t eat the various things from fast food restaurants. Education about nutrition needs to be given
to the parents to ensure that their child eats what is right, and at the same
time it is up to the parents and their beliefs about what is healthy and what
isn’t. On the other hand you have the
overly strict parents that won’t let their children eat any of the “tasty”
stuff so when they go to school they look forward to a little bit of “junk” at
lunch.
I applaud San Diego Unified for trying to help curb a
problem that is taking the country by storm, but a lot more needs to be done
than just not serving meat on Mondays to get kids to like veggies and other
healthy options. Maybe tailor nutrition
education to the youngsters. I think Dr.
Oz should do a children version and make it super gross. Kids love the gross stuff, just look at the
slime on Nickelodeon. Do they even have
that anymore? I live with a 3-year old
so haven’t watched Nickelodeon in many, many years.
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