With the new school year starting, parents\u2019 to-do lists are now filled with shopping for school clothes, school supplies and school food.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right \u2014 school food!<\/p>\n
In past years, our nation\u2019s schools were used by the USDA as a dumping ground for surplus meat and dairy commodities. It is neither a surprise nor coincidence that one-third of our children have become overweight or obese. Such dietary mistakes at an early age become lifelong addictions, raising their risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.<\/p>\n
Then came President Obama\u2019s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 requiring double the servings of fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, less sodium and fat and no meat for breakfast. The guidelines are supported by 86 percent of Americans.<\/p>\n
Most U.S. school districts now offer vegetarian options. More than 120 schools including the entire school districts of Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia and San Diego have implemented Meatless Monday. Some schools have dropped meat from their menu altogether.<\/p>\n
As parents, we need to involve our own children and school cafeteria managers in promoting healthy, plant-based foods in our own schools.<\/p>\n
Going online and searching for \u201cvegetarian options in schools\u201d provides lots of good resources.<\/p>\n
Justin Harris,<\/strong><\/p>\n Juneau<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the new school year starting, parents\u2019 to-do lists are now filled with shopping for school clothes, school supplies and school food. That\u2019s right \u2014 school food! In past years, our nation\u2019s schools were used by the USDA as a dumping ground for surplus meat and dairy commodities. It is neither a surprise nor coincidence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26286"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}