How healthy is the school canteen at your child’s school? If it’s a question you have never asked yourself before, now is the perfect time to start asking.
Busy mum’s don’t always have the time to create nutritious lunch boxes for their kids to take to school, and instead, rely on the school canteen to feed their children. Sadly, in far too many schools across Australia, there is too much processed and nutritionally ’empty’ food. These empty foods are high in calories yet low in nutrition, and they’re being sold in school canteens across our nation, even canteens who call themselves ‘healthy’.
How can chips, mass-produced cakes, lollies, salted noodles, margarine, soft drinks, sweet juices etc be considered a ‘healthy’ addition to a growing child’s diet?? We teach kids about the importance of eating well so wouldn’t it make sense to follow this message through to the canteen?
Over the years I have seen several canteens actually increase their profits by offering fruit, vege sticks, healthy wholemeal sandwiches, fruit muffins, popcorn and food cooked fresh on site. There is plenty of evidence that when kids eat good food they think more clearly, behave more calmly and are sick much less often. Watching the work done by Jamie Oliver with his Food Revolution is an eye opener. Let’s hope this trend of change continues and spreads through our school canteens here in Australia as well.
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