I am not a nutrition nut. I've never counted a calorie in my life. However, I am conscious of well-balanced meals and the importance of nutrition--particularly in children's growing bodies. My children eat fruits and veggies (
often from the organic produced delivered to our home each week by a local CSA farmer). They snack on yogurt vs. more sugary snacks or fat/salt-laden chips. I am alarmed at what society now thinks is acceptable food choices. A recent news story alludes to the idea that pizza is now considered a vegetable (
Pizza = Vegetable). This is a little bit of an embellishment--but the average person hears enough to think that because pizza has tomato sauce, school cafeterias consider pizza a vegetable. If it is good enough for the dietitians at the cafeteria, it should work at home, too. Right?!?!
Well--I've had this similar disagreement with parents when I worked in preschool. We state that we prefer healthy snacks for our growing children. Children will eat healthy if it is provided and their friends are eating it (
a positive peer pressure). The average pre-K is approximately 100 days. Twenty plus of those days are sugar-laden birthday snacks. Let's not forget another five or so days for party cupcakes. Did we mention the three children who brought in sugary snacks for the birth of a brother or sister. Grandma visited and made cupcakes--sure bring them in. If we were lucky, only 20% of snacks were cupcakes & cookies.
But then there were the infamous fruit snacks--my greatest pet-peeve. ATTENTION--FRUIT SNACKS ARE NOT CONSIDERED A FRUIT. However, if pizza is a vegetable, then I must be wrong. My morning coffee comes from beans--is that a veggie? What about cocoa beans and chocolate? Maybe I was the one wrong all of the time.
