Students must be healthy to learn, but they also need to learn to be healthy!We encourage and support health and nutrition education in the classroom. Teaching nutrition to students will help them to grow and learn to their fullest potential and we believe it is the key to promoting lifelong health and wellness. Nutrition Education establishes the basic skills for making healthy eating and lifestyle choices that will carry them into adulthood.
Our school’s breakfast and lunch programs help students to establish the healthy eating habits that they need to grow, learn and play. School lunches contain 1/3 of the recommended daily nutrient allowance and school meals include nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and calcium rich low fat milk.
Many children are flunking healthy eating
- Only 2 percent of students are meeting all the recommendations of the USDA Dietary Guidelines; 16 percent do not meet any
- Less than 15 percent of school children eat the recommended servings of fruit
- Less than 20 percent eat the recommended servings of vegetables
- About 25 percent eat the recommended servings of grains
- Only 30 percent consume the recommended milk group servings
- Only 19 percent of girls ages 9 to 19 meet the recommended intakes for calcium
- Only 16 percent of school children meet the guidelines for saturated fat
The Consequences are Troubling
- Childhood obesity is a national epidemic, likely to result in earlier onset and increased prevalence of disease
- The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than doubled in the past 30 years
- Unhealthy eating and physical inactivity are causes of obesity and chronic disease, resulting in at least 300,000 deaths each year
- Poor nutrition associated with heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes, alone, now costs $71 billion a year