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healthy choices: a school-centric program that actually gets kids engaged and excited about eating well! It started out small, but now Healthy Choices is a big-picture program designed to proactively improve the lifelong health of every student at each partner school. It integrates Smart Foods Healthy Kids knowledge into school policies and practices. The goal is to help students attain their healthiest potential through nutritional literacy (think: food IQ, and knowing why brains like carrots better than cookies) and participative learning (think: students who create surveys, veggie PR campaigns, Excel spreadsheets).
On levels both academic and personal, we believe a school curriculum should provide students with skills and abilities for success, and prepare them for embracing tomorrow’s opportunities. Teaching children to make wise choices about how they nourish their bodies and brains—and their future—accomplishes that.
the perfect time for schools to lead Studies incontrovertibly prove that good nutrition is necessary for cognitive development, positive performance and behavior in school, increased school attendance (improved immunity), and optimal physical performance. Yet, this “Junk Food Generation” is predicted to be the first generation in history to expect a shorter lifespan than their parents, according to the CDC (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Largely, the CDC informs us, this prediction hails from lifestyle choices, including diet. Obesity, diabetes, many cancers, and other diseases of modern, fast-food life are conspiring to impede not only scholastic achievement, but the very quality of life itself.
Students just aren't aware of the effects of appropriate nutrition: their food choices show it, as do the statistics. This is not surprising given the surfeit of advertising directed specifically at children. Unfortunately, there is no countervailing nutritional literacy resource to help forestall the dangerous trends (but I'm working on it!). Leadership at the most potentially influential level is necessary to help children learn to make nutritious choices. Schools have the possibility to serve all stakeholders by stepping in to fill the leadership gap with programs like Healthy Choices.
objectives At the very highest level, the objective of Healthy Choices is to give students the skills they need to distinguish helpful foods from harmful foods. From that starting point, and over the course of a school year, students learn how to make the best nutritional choices possible (with a focus on vegetables to avoid diet-of-the-week controversy), being able to navigate labels, eating-out strategies, snack selections, and their own food connection.
Depending on the school’s culture, size, and particular issues, we create any number of inspiring, fun, and most important, EFFECTIVE Healthy Choices activities. These may include:
Improving food IQ is a relatively new role for schools. However, given current national public policy trends, the focus on health care costs, and the spotlight on the commingling obesity and diabetes epidemics, “wellness policies” in schools will ultimately become the norm. At Smart Foods Healthy Kids, we’re ready to help turn a "policy" into a healthier student body.
If you’d like Smart Foods Healthy Kids to help your own school make healthy choices, please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and we’ll be glad to tell you more!
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