Jamie Oliver and Childhood Obesity: The School Cafeteria Challenge!
I stand up and applaud the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver from England and the Food Network! He is doing what many of us have wanted to see happen for a LONG time to change the quality of food that our children are eating at school and at home. It’s literally time for a Food Revolution for our children to address the issues of Childhood Obesity and a healthy Lifestyle that can be embraced from youth to adulthood.
Jamie Oliver is no stranger to showing people how to prepare great food from scratch. He is now going after the kids and it’s so absolutely necessary.
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
Dr. Bernard did his presentation about reversing Diabetes by using a Vegan diet on PBS today and one of the statistics he quoted was that one in three children are now going to develop Diabetes. Well, not now that Jamie and some of us who are on this same healthy food bandwagon have a voice that is heard and acted upon to change the way our children are eating!
Food in most school cafeterias and in the vending machines in schools don’t even resemble anything identifiable as a whole food. The menu is filled with cheap processed food limited by budgetary restrictions and devoid of truly health choices that our kids need to stay alert and learn while at school.
Honestly, it’s no wonder that there are epidemic proportions of Obesity and Diabetes among younger and younger members of the population who eats this crappy food. Even your kid’s dogs and cats are developing arthritis and other degenerative diseases with scraps from the table and processed petfood. It’s a disgrace and a national disaster! No wonder there are horrendous conditions which result in situations like Columbine in our schools…our kids are drugged by synthetic chemicals, high fructose corn syrup, and mind/mood-altering substances that are having an impact on the sanity of students. They can’t even sit still long enough to learn and study. They are drugged by the food they are eating and it has to change!
Jamie’s TV show about this Food Revolution airs in March and we want you to get on this bandwagon to bring attention and lasting change to this health issue…for the sake of our children’s future. Our nation needs this change…and other countries have been setting this example and leading the eay for the rest of the world.
Children should be gardening at school. They should learn to take seeds, prepare the soil, plant the seeds, nurture the garden, harvest the food, and prepare their breakfast and lunch from the garden. They should be learning this through direct experience – there is no better way than to get your children’s hands in the dirt and then into the food in the kitchen.
You can do the same thing at home, too. You can grow a garden or share in a community garden and get your kids involved in the entire process. This includes getting your children into your kitchen and teaching them how to prepare healthy food from whole foods. The life of the entire family will change for the better!
The vending machines on school should only have healthy choices available to our children. This will take an incredible effort on the part of business and corporate interests to change, but change it must. Encourage your local school districts to change their policies in their classrooms, halls, gyms, and cafeterias. Collectively we can do this!
I remember how some people teased my mother for giving the four of us our daily Chocks vitamins. These same people also noticed that we all did well in school. I was a ‘straight A’ student and valedictorian of my class as well as earning scholarships that took me through college. The nutritional supplementation of Chocks and the whole foods that my Italian mother loved to cook from scratch made an impact in my life as a student. My family cared enough to ensure that we ate breakfast before heading off to school. Today so many children don’t eat breakfast and it shows in their behavior and their grades with poor performance in the classroom and in the gym.
We used to go to school at 6 a.m. in the morning to practice gymnastics and then had our regular gym classes followed after school with volleyball, basketball, track, gymnastics, and wrestling. We got a lot more than the one hour of exercise daily that Michelle Obama and the NFL are recommending to our children! Get your children outside and doing all the things that active children love to do – play and move. You can also teach your children to stretch in the morning and to do Yoga. They will be healthier now and into their adult years when they begin to develop a routine that integrates whole foods, exercise, and play along with their studies.
We were skiing, swimming, playing tennis, riding horses, camping and climbing mountains, hiking, golfing, and water skiing. We were engaged! We were active. I even climbed a mountain when I was eight months pregnant with my daughter when close to forty. We were in excellent condition from childhood into adulthood. This is the legacy we need to give to our children and our grandchildren at this time in history. We need to turn things around beginning in schools and then in our homes and in our public places. It’s the evolution of a Food Revolution after all!
Up-Date News: Today, March 16th, PepsiCo announced that their new policy was to reduce and remove sugared high calorie soft drinks from all school vending machines around the world by 2012. This is the most promising news that we have heard from this soft drink giant in years! I heartily support Pepsi and would love to see them speed up this process immediately. You can read their Press Release here:
PepsiCo Announcement
