Kids Reject New School Lunches: Surprise, Surprise.

Kids hate the new school lunch program. Or at least enough kids are being vocal about hating the changes to cause concern.

You've probably seen (or at least heard about) the video made by Kansas kids who claim to be starving.

I hope you've seen Jon Stewart's hilarious response to the situation. The gist of it is this: If you're hungry, eat!

My response to the situation has been somewhat tamer, and a lot less entertaining.

In Eat Like a Linebacker, Get Fat Like a Likebacker on The Huffington Post, I argue that the feeling that kids need more food isn't restricted to the Kansas kids.

Americans are consumed with calories. But when it comes to kids, the relationship is backwards: Instead of worrying that kids are eating too many calories, we worry that kids aren't eating enough.

In fact, I recently conducted an Internet survey in preparation for my new online classes—which start on Monday, by the way—and topping the list of parental concerns was getting kids to eat more food, especially getting them to eat more fruits and vegetables.

Register for the first online class. It's FREE and you'll never have to utter the words, "Just try it, and if you don't like it you don't have to eat it."

We shouldn't be surprised that when we spend the first years of our kids' lives telling them to eat more that they have to spend the rest of their lives figuring out how to eat less.

I've made the argument before that our culture of nutrition is part of the reason parents inadvertently teach their kids to overeat: The pressure to get the right nutrients into kids is enormous, and because there's no way of measuring nutrient consumption, parents feel compelled to push ever more food into their kids'' mouths. Pediatricians even sometimes make the situation worse.

Then, in Teaching Kids to Hate the Healthy Stuff, posted on Psychology Today, I argue:

If we ever needed proof that nutrition isn’t the right paradigm for teaching kids to eat right, here it is. After years of accepting school lunches that are laden with sugar, salt and fat because they contain just enough of the right nutrients—chicken nuggets=protein, chocolate milk=calcium, pizza=vegetables—schools are trying to change the way kids eat. The kids aren’t having it, and I’m not surprised.

We can't feed to our kids' taste preferences, exposing kids to a certain type of eating experience, and then expect them to accept change without at least a bit of a backlash. 

Our goal has to change from "getting" nutrients into kids—a coercive way of thinking about the job at best—to teaching kids how to eat right.

Get the tools you need in my new ONLINE courses, starting Monday October 15th. (Have I plugged them enough?)

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

The Argument for Packing an Unhealthy School Lunch

There's a lot of pressure at this time of year to write a back-to-school healthy lunch post.

But I want to make an argument for packing an unhealthy lunch.  Not one filled with Coke, Fritos and Ring Dings, but not the vegetable-kabob, salad lunch of nutritionists' (and bloggers') dreams.

I'm talking about a lunch that might not have fruits or vegetables in it (yet). 

Packing an unhealthy lunch can be better than packing a healthy lunch if...

 1) Your children routinely throw out/ignore the carrot sticks or apple slices you pack.

I know a lot of parents who insist on packing fruits and vegetables (or yogurt, cheese...) knowing full well that their children will never, in a million years, eat these items. I get the rationale (you want to send the message that fruits and veggies are important, and you hope that today will be THE day) but it teaches the unintended lesson I call "Seek and Destroy." For more on "Seek and Destroy" read The Bad News About Healthy Lunches.

2) You routinely send "healthy" versions of "unhealthy" foods. Think of this is as The (Chocolate) Milk Mistake argument on steroids. Eating pizza produces a pizza eating habit, even if the pizza is healthy. "Healthifying" food also distorts what kids think of as healthy, and this affects their habits too. Read Cookies and The Cycle of Guilty Eating to see how healthy cookies make it harder to teach your kids to eat vegetables.

3) You send the same healthy lunch everyday because you know your kids will eat it. This strategy limits your children's palates, reinforces their ideas about what they should eat and teaches your children to expect the same food every day. Try introducing new foods after that.

You can use unhealthy lunches to teach your children healthy eating habits.

These lessons may not seem like much but these three principles translate everything your kids need to know about nutrition into behavior and, in doing so, they lay the foundation for better eating down the road.

• Proportion: Eat foods in different amounts and frequencies according to how healthy they are. 

I know this sounds like an impossible lesson to teach using unhealthy foods but it's not. Help your children learn this concept with whatever group of foods they eat. Even if what you're distinguishing between are not-so-healthy and really-unhealthy foods, you can still teach the lesson that "we eat this more frequently than that because it has better things for your body." 

• Variety: Eat different foods from day to day. 

Most parents think variety means new.  It doesn't. Variety means different. Send a different, less-than-healthy lunch from day-to-day and explicitly telli your children why you're doing this.  (Be upfront: this is the foundation for new foods.)  I call this The Rotation Rule and it changes minds and taste buds. 

If you think your children will only eat PB&J for lunch, think big. There are breakfast and dinner foods, and plenty of snack combinations that could fill a lunch box (raisins, crackers, yogurt and a granola bar for instance). 

If your child must eat the same sandwich every day, at least put it on different bread or cut the sandwich into different shapes.  Do anything you can to make the sandwich different from day to day. 

• Moderation: Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. 

Don't ask your children to finish their food. Rather, teach them to eat a little of everything in their lunchbox before they finish any one item.  The rationale? Kids don't know when they're going to be full and so they devour the foods they favor and leave the rest as leftovers.  (This doesn't seem like an important rule now, but it will stand your kids in good stead when they start eating better.) Read My Child Asks for Seconds of Pasta Before She's Even Touched Her Peas.

It's tempting to throw in the towel when your kids don't eat well. 

Focus on teaching your kids how to eat, however, and you will still set your kids up for a lifetime of healthy eating.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Blaming Schools for Bad Lunches

I’m with everyone on how bad school lunches are. 

School lunches aren’t just comprised of nutritionally inferior fare they taste pretty bad too.  (Check out Marion Nestle’s list of resources if you’re interested in improving the quality of lunch at your kids’ schools.)

But blaming schools for our kids’ bad eating habits is misplaced.  Schools don’t produce our kids’ bad eating habits. Kids come to school with bad eating habits and schools reinforce them.

Studies show that kids develop bad eating habits well before they go to school.

Some of the upset over the quality of school lunches presupposes that kids are eating healthy (if not stellar) diets at home.  Most are not. 

Research shows that 2-3 year olds typically consume a diet high in saturated fat and sodium and low in fiber. 

In addition, on any given day:

• 25% of 2-3 year olds don’t eat a single serving of fruit.
• 30% of 2-3 year olds don’t eat a single serving of vegetables.  When kids do eat vegetables, they’re more likely to eat white potatoes (usually French fries) than any other type of vegetable.

These aren’t encouraging statistics. But here’s the most shocking fact:

On any given day, more preschoolers will consume sweetened beverages, desserts and snack foods than will eat fruits or vegetables. 

No wonder 2 out of 10 children aged 2 to 5 are now obese.

I’m not trying to let schools off the hook, but these early eating habits are important because they shape everything.

It’s hard to change how kids eat.  In fact, research shows that if you want to know what children will like when they’re 8, look at what foods they eat when they’re 4.  It doesn’t change that much.

It's unrealistic to expect schools to undo all this damage.

I'm not trying to blame parents either.

It's hard to teach kids to eat right, especially when there is so much pressure to get the right nutrients into kids. Indeed, I think that all the noise about nutrition makes parents choose feeding strategies that end up biting them in the butt. Read Training Tiny Taste Buds, Manufacturing Magic and The (Chocolate) Milk Mistake for examples of how chasing nutrients can go awry.

Nonetheless, there is a lot parents can do to increase the quality of their children’s eating, even in the face of nutritiously inferior foods at school.

You can neutralize the impact of school lunch on your kids' diets at the same time that you are teaching your kids good lifelong eating habits.

Here are 5 strategies:

1) Increase the quality of the food you serve at home – and vary the kinds of foods you serve more consciously – to accommodate school lunches.

It’s sad news, but you may have to cut out the cookies or the crackers or the pizza at home to balance the amount (and frequency) of these items that your kids are eating at school.

Also, make sure you add a small serving of fruits and vegetables to every meal and snack that you serve.  The more frequently you serve fruits and vegetables the more accustomed to them your kids will be and the more readily they’ll eat them. 

And, if you want some recipes that kids are guaranteed to enjoy, read Chef Bobo’s Good Food Cookbook.   I use this book myself, and I’ve never met a kid who didn’t like the cauliflower soup. I’m not kidding.

2) Tone down the emphasis on nutrition. Instead, talk to your children about the behaviors that translate nutrition into healthy eating. 

• Proportion: Eat foods in relation to their healthy benefits.  In other words, eat the healthiest foods the most, the marginal and junky foods the least.
• Variety: Eat a wide range of foods.
• Moderation: Eat when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full.

Teach your children these 3 styles of eating and they’ll automatically eat more nutritiously.  And remember, you can introduce these principles no matter how old—or how picky—your children are. Read House Building 101.

3) Practice transparent parenting.

Talk to your children about how you make decisions.  Specifically relate your food decisions back to the principles of proportion, variety, and moderation so your children know why they can’t have ice cream, or why you’re serving vegetables… yet again.

4) Guide your children, but let them make the choices. 

Most school lunches have pitifully few choices, but look for choices and you’ll see they’re there.  For instance, most schools offer kids a choice between flavored or plain milk, or between milk and juice.  Consider letting your children choose flavored milk 2 days per week. 

5) Recognize small changes in your children’s eating habits.

Small improvements add up.  They really do.

Of course, I would still love to see schools improve their game.

But even if they do, it probably won't amount to a hill of beans unless parents do the same.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

 For more on this topic read When School Nutrition Stinks

================================================================

Sources:

Fox, M. K., E. Condon, R. R. Briefel, K. Reidy, and D. M. Deming. 2010. “Food Consumption Patterns of Young Preschoolers: Are They Starting Off on the Right Path?” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 110: S52-S59.

Skinner, J. D., B. R. Carruth, W. Bounds, and P. Ziegler. 2002. “Children's Food Preferences: a Logitudinal Analysis.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 102(11): 1638-47.