HOSP104- M08 Discussion Childhood Nutrition

Watch either of the two videos posted below in the module. Both have a general theme of foods that we are feeding our children via school lunches and the effect on health. First, discuss your thoughts on the videos. Then, thinking back to MyPlate, choose one food group and propose how we can make the offerings healthier. What would you change to impact better nutrition and healthy weight for kids?

After viewing the two videos, I learned that kids have a shorter life span than their parents. This is because the kids are not eating healthy and nutrition foods. Diet related disease is the number one killer in the United States. Kids are not eating enough fresh vegetables. They choose to eat fried vegetables such as French fries, tator tots and mashed potatoes.

Children eat up to two meals day at school. School Nutrition is very important to keep kid healthy. There is not enough money budgeted for healthy school lunches. It is cheap to get processed food, canned food and frozen food. Thinking about MyPlate, I would choose to change the fruits and vegetables group in their school. The school serves canned vegetables. Canned food is soggy, lacks nutrition, and is full of salt.

I suggest the schools offer fresh vegetables that are streamed to ensure the most nutrition . Instead of offering fresh fruits the school offers soggy canned fruit and fruit snacks that are full of sugar. I suggest to serve fresh fruits such as strawberries, blueberries, fresh pineapple, oranges, bananas and apples. Fresh fruits are full of fiber and low in sugar. I would also offer a salad bar at every lunch.

In order to impact nutrition and healthy weight for children, I would make sure every child learned about nutrition at school and learned how to cook. I think all schools at every age level should offer a healthy nutrition class that teaches children about food and how to make healthy choices. I would encourage the student and their families to buy fresh food and cook in their home daily. I would offer a weekly newsletter in each school that has recipes for healthy meals that are easy and in expensive. If we teach kids to make heathy choices then they won’t get sick.