Yesterday the Possummomma posted about a woman who said:
The school is supposed to give the kids a healthy lunch. So what that
there’s fact and sugar or chemicals. It’s food. We’re a working
class family that can’t afford to fix a good lunch for the two dollars I give
the kids for school lunch. The kids wouldn’t eat fruits and veggies anyway. When am I supposed to make these lunches? I work. Besides that it’s not my responsibility to go out of my way to make lunches that the school must give by law.
To which my only reaction can possibly be:
My brain reads “So what that there’s [fat] and sugar or chemicals” and it ‘splodes a little. What on Earth do you mean, So what? Are you the one in charge or not? Are you the one modeling behavior for your kids, or are you not? On what planet is it not your responsibility?
(In case you didn’t look at the webpage in question, in response to this declaration, the Possummomma shows her how to fix a good, healthy lunch for under two dollars.)
And with fruits and veggies: I honestly can only guess she’s never given them to her kids. My kids won’t eat everything — they won’t even eat all the things they used to eat. (Sophia the girl who could eat an entire bunch of asparagus when she was two won’t even touch the stuff now.) But we still offer them a variety of foods and they have favorite fruits and veggies despite being picky.
One of the key things I decided on early was that I was not going to be a short-order cook. There are a few choices for breakfast on school mornings — not as many as I’d like, but we tend to be rushing around in the morning and I keep the menu simple. I offer them a few choices for their lunch: they can pick what kind of sandwich they want or a thermos of soup, plus a fruit and maybe a snack. For dinner, I serve one meal. They can eat some of what’s put on the table, or they can pass and wait for breakfast in the morning. Strangely enough, they usually end up eating some or all of what I’ve served. Not always, and probably not with as much variety as I’d like. (For instance, they’ll usually have some of whatever starch I serve.) But they know they’re not getting anything else instead.
One good book worth checking out on the subject is Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes. And a quick glance through Amazon shows a number of books on the subject: Brown Bag Success: Making Healthy Lunches Your Kids Won’t Trade, The Top 100 Recipes for a Healthy Lunchbox, and The Healthy Lunchbox. Several of which turn out to be available at my local library, so I’m going to pick a few up and check them out.
I know it can be a pain in the ass to find out everything about everything, but please: this is your body, and your kids’ bodies. You take charge of what goes into them, okay?