Sunday, February 3rd, 2008...3:10 am

Adequate Nutrition: Making Kids Fat?

The Miami Herald reports “Broward County School Kids Not Given Insufficient Enough Food”

Article Highlights:

  • Despite progressive lunch programs which provide on average between 85 and 207 fewer calories than the USDA dietary guidelines currently require, there are still students in Broward County who are fat.
  • With lower calorie levels failing to curb weight gain, the obvious solution is for the USDA to lower the calorie requirements.
  • Until then, school officials may actually be forced to continue providing food to growing children and even encourage them to eat more.

Steps To Take

  1. Contact your childrens’ school and ask if your children are being given enough to eat. If so, demand they be given less.
  2. Encourage your child to skip lunch every once in a while, “just in case.” Set aside time to share tips for avoiding hunger pangs and lightheadedness.
  3. School districts typically count calories by the amount of food on lunchroom trays, not the amount eaten. Suggest your child help out by taking extra servings and then throwing them away when nobody is looking.

3 Comments

Filed under News Briefs

3 Comments

  • BigLiberty
    February 3rd, 2008 at 9:18 am

    Thanks for this post. I live in Massachusetts, but I think we should get ahead of the lowered USDA standards and help out. My children are skinny, but they eat a lot of food. Sometimes they even eat the food off the fat kids’ plates, because the fat kids are trying to lose weight so that their BMIs, which are announced publicly during gym class at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year, won’t be as high.

    Of course, I should be worried about ‘fat prevention,’ since although my children are skinny, they will eventually catch fat from their friends and get fat. I will send them to school with bottles of water to drink and gum to chew when they get hungry. We’ll start with skipping one meal a week, and then move it up to two, three, or even four.

    I’m happy to prevent the awful fat from infecting my children. Thank you so much for this post!

  • Twistie
    February 3rd, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    Thank goodness for this timely reminder that if we feed growing children, they may one day become fat fatties!

    It is irresponsible of schools to provide food services to children, lest they think food is something they actually need. I say it’s time to close down all school lunch programs and replace them with compulsory Pilates sessions.

  • Colleen
    February 4th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    I agree, Twistie. Obviously the problem is that schools aren’t including enough compulsory physical activity in their programs. After all, it’s not like the function of a school is to teach children how to read and do math and things like that. No, the purpose of a school is to keep children thin, so that society won’t have to do the hard work of shunning them later on.

    Also, 664 calories for an elementary school lunch? Are these people crazy? Don’t they know that you can easily survive on 800 calories a day? (Of course I don’t need to back up this assertion with “evidence.” It’s as simple as that!) These children need to learn AS SOON AS POSSIBLE that you should eat the smallest amount of food you possibly can without actually dying of starvation. How else will they be healthy?

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