Here's a strategy for healthier students

Are we failing or just falling down in our ability to provide our children with clean food and healthy nourishment at school?

Every parent should be comfortable and trust school menus but in reading the menus from the paper, it is very difficult.

Like the poem below, we are becoming victims of all the hypocrisy in today’s use of ingredients. Sixty-eight percent of all packaged foods have sugar added. If you are trying to cut sugar, this will give you no ability to be able to do that.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

Humpty Dumpty was an egg in this poem written by a woman who called herself Mother Goose and wanted to keep her identity unknown. She wrote 25 poems that we know of.

For this article, Humpty represents our food supply. Anyone ever drop an uncooked raw egg on the floor? Could you possibly put it back together? In some cases our food supply is in jeopardy at the very core of revisions and changes to our food before it hits our plates.

Happening in the public arena, local people and organizations are bringing healthy and organic interests and writings daily. Also through our newspapers and other publications, our society is slowly becoming aware of how our food supply can be contaminated and more people than ever are buying organic to avoid the unknown additives.

Manufacturers are well aware of a surge in a stage of awareness and are responding with inventive advertising, adding healthier ingredients or in a lot of advertising: “no RBST,” “no added sugar,” “no HFCS,” “no hormones,” “gluten free” or “no gluten” on labels. But a lot of these labels are meaningless. It looks like it is an attention getter because in some cases the food never had it in the first place.

Never before have we seen more imaginative competition and advertising aimed at gaining more of a share of the market place. Most of these foods are developed in laboratories or manufacturing plants and so much of our current food supply is made with chemicals and preservatives for longer shelf life, which is preferred by manufacturers.

Organic food is more expensive because, so far, there are little or no subsidies given to organic farmers. Why are only unhealthy foods subsidized by our Department of Agriculture? If you don’t know, it is because the government is not after food quality as much as farmer support to make sure farmers keep growing food and getting paid.

Hidden food additives, pesticides, reduced nutrition, transfats. sugar, as HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) with unknown ingredients, chemicals, are all used in our packaged and processed food for long shelf life and convenience. One soda manufacturer has started putting fiber in their product to make it appear healthier. Why not just cut down on sugars such as HFCS, which is very addictive? So far, no one has been able to get the manufacturer to reveal how this is made or what is in it but it’s a lot less expensive than sugar. So manufacturers gravitate toward HFCS as their sweetener.

Tip: Avoid drinks made with HFCS, artificial sweeteners, food coloring and vitamins.

Hypocrates, the father of medicine, said, ”Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”

“Buy plants not food made in plants” is a slogan to follow.

Schools seem to be more interested in price than quality food for schools. It is more about cost and quantity. Many community sources are becoming available with production of “green foods” and awaiting a market. Why not help those organic farmers by using cleaner, healthier food? We should be looking at these sources instead of processed foods that put our children to sleep by noon. Foods that are full of carbs and sugars are questionable in a daily diet for our children.

There are aisles and aisles of packaged foods that may have preservatives and bug-resistant ingredients for long shelf life. High-sugar cereals are no better than eating candy bars. But busy people take advantage of these types of food for quick food preparation. Let’s start an awareness of processed and packaged foods that are not healthy and visibly point out why organic is so much healthier. Because schools are providing two meals a day to our children, we need to get this message to our schools and maybe this could be the year of change.

In sharing with one pharmacy about food concerns, the question of a petition drive came up. Parents looking to support healthy kids want a petition (they all would sign it) and are enthusiastic to see some movement in this direction. If you are interested you can call me at 208-457-9988 and we can have meetings to see what we can accomplish to get some changes.

It has to start somewhere, even small changes that will benefit our children. Every solution can come with a reduction or elimination of some bad food and could become a milestone in this journey. The Environmental Group which tests food for pesticides has made avocadoes first for clean, and — surprise — sweet corn is second place. Be sure that it’s labeled sweet corn (no pesticides or GMO).

•••

Delphine Kenney, a Kootenai County resident, is a Certified Nutrition Health Coach and graduate of the Institute for Integrated Nutrition.